Sonic Youth

There are many reasons why one might want to see a Sonic Youth show today:

1) after nearly thirty years of career, they're unanimously recognized as a living monument;

2) they are historically the most towering figures of noise-rock, a point of reference for hordes of musicians born after them;

3) the setting for the show is thrilling, a location that alone is worth the price of admission;

4) there's Kim Gordon, who, though older now, is still there to be admired at the center of the stage;

5) there's the full performance of "Daydream Nation", a must of 80s rock.

By the end of the show, we found other reasons that might have made skipping it a viable option:

1) those who had already seen them in the past found before them a faded copy of the once-incendiary band, a band that today dares less, experiments less, and rests on its past, while its recent work, though still solid, is less eclectic and more pop-oriented;

2) however boundless and unconditional the love we have for them, we can't help but notice that the lovely Kim is by now completely voiceless; she stays still behind her now-harmless bass for the whole show, and only towards the end does she allow herself little dances and twirls that verge on the pathetic. At the end of the concert, when the band takes its bow, she leaves without even glancing at her audience;

3) "Daydream Nation" is a great record, but what's the point of dedicating an entire concert to playing it in full, when the band's vast back catalogue would have let them put together a far more varied and, dare I say, interesting set, thus avoiding the terrible predictability of "I already know what song they'll play next".

In light of these brief reflections, a Sonic Youth concert is still a Sonic Youth concert, even if today they seem more predictable and less innovative than in the good old days.

As expected, the first part of the set consists of a full performance of "Daydream Nation", the album that cemented their status once and for all in 1988; a performance with neither glory nor disgrace, in which we would certainly have appreciated a few unexpected touches. Instead, even the most damnably noise-drenched moment, the central section of "Total Trash", gets simplified to make it easier to digest.

There's plenty of emotion to be had, both for the songs themselves and for what Sonic Youth represent, but I doubt a set like this could win the quartet any new fans, even though Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo are still great. The problem is that they play as if they'd "academicised" their own style, no longer devoted to seeking out new solutions but instead prisoners of a slavish repetition of themselves.

It's as if we were watching a clone, or a particularly effective cover band, capable of executing the repertoire flawlessly but with no interest in adding anything jarring or unheard-before.

But the evening's biggest flaw lies in the encores, two of them, which inexplicably draw exclusively on their most recent studio album, "Rather Ripped", a decent record released about a year earlier.

The rest of an important, essential discography is completely ignored: not a single track from "Dirty", not even a nod to any other studio album. A real shame.

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