Sonic Youth

Nearly 30 years in, Sonic Youth remains restless. "The Eternal" is Sonic Youth's spiritual return home, with the art-punk veterans wandering back into indie-ville after 15 years at a conglomerate. Kim Gordon conveying the dismay felt when asked what it's like being a girl in a band is sufficient retort to the crud Sonic Youth dealt with getting out its music on a major label through the 1990s. "The Eternal" is more song-oriented in comparison to the brash albums preceding it. Yet ingredients from those progressive forays ensure that the new tunes sound fresh even as the album is marked with such Sonic signatures as...

When M. Ward sings, his concentration seems fixed on a point off on the horizon, and the performance becomes an exercise in transporting the audience to that spot. Ward is so good at this that he'll have you believing there actually is a horizon inside a darkened concert hall. Such was the case Tuesday at the House of Blues, where Ward brought his band to celebrate the recent release of "A Wasteland Companion. " Oddly, Ward played just three songs from his new album - linking them all about three-quarters of the way through the 80-minute show.

After producing complex, innovative art punk for more than 20 years, Sonic Youth has set the bar very high. Expanded to a five piece in 1999 with the addition of Jim O'Rourke, the band has consistently reinvented itself while maintaining a core of creative integrity, political mindedness, artistic curiosity, and a certifiable feedback fetish, while influencing several generations of indie rockers. On the new "Sonic Nurse," the group remains masters of making dissonance lovely, with an album that is poised yet relaxed, as the band teases many of the songs into six-plus minute opuses.

For longtime Sonic Youth fans, the altogether different set of cohorts surrounding Thurston Moore might very well not have been the strangest sight Tuesday at the Somerville Theatre. That honor probably went to the spectacle of Moore using the same guitar for two songs in a row, to say nothing of his limiting himself a mere two guitars all night. But there he was, forgoing his band's standard complement of dozens of guitars, each with its unique tuning, helping to draw a clear distinction between Sonic Youth and his solo work.

Let's take a moment to praise Sonic Youth's guitar techs. They may have the single hardest backstage job in the business, working as they do for a band whose every song requires a unique tuning. They don't just prepare the instruments (each one differently), they have actual guitar cues, for crying out loud, making sure that the right one gets into the right hands at the right time. Were it not for them, Sonic Youth might not be the great live band it is. At the very least, if Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore were themselves responsible for making quick changeovers to the correct guitars,...

SOMERVILLE -- For a cold Sunday night, P.A.'s Lounge was well filled. However, given that the billed headliner was Bark Haze, an experimental guitar duo featuring Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore and the mysteriously monikered Gown (a.k.a. Andrew McGregor ), you'd presume the line would've been around the block. Somerville! Thurston Moore! Come on! But this was a low-key, barely publicized appearance where the preternaturally youthful looking Moore seemed intent on, well, having no intentions beyond hanging out and, when he was onstage, coaxing and demanding sounds from...

What’s not to love about New York? For one raucous, revelatory Sunday night, the Wilbur Theatre should have been named “CBGB North’’ with its double dose of alternative rock from Sonic Youth and the Feelies. These influential New York acts have cast a long shadow over the past 30 years, encouraging countless bands to explore the fertile landscape beyond traditional guitar rock. Sonic Youth’s set roared forward with several songs from “The Eternal,’’ an album released last June that reinforces the band’s steady direction...

When they formed Sonic Youth in the early 1980s, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon probably didn't consider the ramifications of selecting a band name that seemed to preclude aging gracefully. They're stuck with it now, though, despite lasting long enough to be considered elder statesmen of avant-garde noise rock. Having released its first record in 1983, Sonic Youth will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in four years. Sonic Youth may have matured, but the band hasn't grown complacent, as evidenced by the chaotic noise on display...

For longtime Sonic Youth fans, the altogether different set of cohorts surrounding Thurston Moore might very well not have been the strangest sight Tuesday at the Somerville Theatre. That honor probably went to the spectacle of Moore using the same guitar for two songs in a row, to say nothing of his limiting himself a mere two guitars all night. But there he was, forgoing his band's standard complement of dozens of guitars, each with its unique tuning, helping to draw a clear distinction between Sonic Youth and his solo work.

MONTICELLO, N.Y. — Kutsher’s is more than just the Borscht Belt country club that hosted the three-day All Tomorrow’s Parties festival this past weekend. With its plant-glutted pond and overgrown tennis courts, its slumping stairs and sprawling lobbies, its dusty chandeliers, faded paintings, and disused pianos, the whole place maintains a slightly musty air of resolve to proceed into its own private inevitabilities with grace, and it’s oddly appropriate to the event at hand.

MALE BONDING With Love Inks and Girlfriends At Brighton Music Hall, Wednesday, 9 p.m. Tickets: $12, $10 in advance. 800-745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com John Arthur Webb gets it when music critics compare his band, Male Bonding, to forebears from the '90s Britpop invasion or to an even earlier moody touchstone, the Smiths. But Blink-182? "I like them. They have good songs," Webb offers, but the direct link that a magazine writer made between Male Bonding and Blink-182 eludes him. Writers began circling London's Male Bonding once the band's 2010 debut,...

YOUNG ADULTS BLACK HOLE Amdiscs It’s barely been a year since the two Villón brothers — singer-guitarist Chris and drummer Kurt — teamed with bassist Demitri Miró, dubbed themselves Young Adults, and self-released a demo last January that more than hinted at some compellingly corrosive chemistry at work: a compressed-yet-sweeping blitzkrieg of art-damaged noise the trio liked to call “ambient punk.’’ Now back from...

MONTICELLO, N.Y. — Kutsher’s is more than just the Borscht Belt country club that hosted the three-day All Tomorrow’s Parties festival this past weekend. With its plant-glutted pond and overgrown tennis courts, its slumping stairs and sprawling lobbies, its dusty chandeliers, faded paintings, and disused pianos, the whole place maintains a slightly musty air of resolve to proceed into its own private inevitabilities with grace, and it’s oddly appropriate to the event at hand.

What’s not to love about New York? For one raucous, revelatory Sunday night, the Wilbur Theatre should have been named “CBGB North’’ with its double dose of alternative rock from Sonic Youth and the Feelies. These influential New York acts have cast a long shadow over the past 30 years, encouraging countless bands to explore the fertile landscape beyond traditional guitar rock. Sonic Youth’s set roared forward with several songs from “The Eternal,’’ an album released last June that reinforces the band’s steady direction toward...

Nearly 30 years in, Sonic Youth remains restless. "The Eternal" is Sonic Youth's spiritual return home, with the art-punk veterans wandering back into indie-ville after 15 years at a conglomerate. Kim Gordon conveying the dismay felt when asked what it's like being a girl in a band is sufficient retort to the crud Sonic Youth dealt with getting out its music on a major label through the 1990s. "The Eternal" is more song-oriented in comparison to the brash albums preceding it. Yet ingredients from those progressive forays ensure that the new tunes sound fresh even as the album is marked...

LOS ANGELES - Singer-songwriter-producer Delaney Bramlett, who penned such classic rock songs as "Let it Rain" and worked with musicians George Harrison and Eric Clapton, has died. He was 69. Mr. Bramlett died Saturday shortly before 5 a.m. at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles as a result of complications from gallbladder surgery, his wife Susan Lanier-Bramlett said. Mr. Bramlett, a Mississippi native, enjoyed a career in the music business that spanned 50 years.

LOS ANGELES - Singer-songwriter-producer Delaney Bramlett, who penned such classic rock songs as "Let it Rain" and worked with musicians George Harrison and Eric Clapton, has died. He was 69. Mr. Bramlett died Saturday shortly before 5 a.m. at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles as a result of complications from gallbladder surgery, his wife Susan Lanier-Bramlett said. Mr. Bramlett, a Mississippi native, enjoyed a career in the music business that spanned 50 years.

When M. Ward sings, his concentration seems fixed on a point off on the horizon, and the performance becomes an exercise in transporting the audience to that spot. Ward is so good at this that he'll have you believing there actually is a horizon inside a darkened concert hall. Such was the case Tuesday at the House of Blues, where Ward brought his band to celebrate the recent release of "A Wasteland Companion. " Oddly, Ward played just three songs from his new album - linking them all about three-quarters of the way through the 80-minute show.

Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter did the unthinkable Monday night at the Paradise: It came out early. Not only that, frontman Bradford Cox immediately asked for less of his own guitar in his monitor. That's two violations of rock 'n' roll decorum right off the bat, but the band never forgot the primary purpose: to make a heck of a lot of noise. It might have been all but unbearable if Deerhunter didn't couch its unearthly racket in sharply crafted songs, more than half of which came from its new album, "Microcastle.

Reprinted from late editions of Saturday's Globe. SOMERVILLE - It has toured the world and been the subject of an immensely well-received recent documentary, but Friday night the Northampton-based Young@Heart Chorus made its long-overdue debut in the Boston area. Director Bob Cilman promised it wouldn't be the last and that's good news for any local concertgoers who've ever questioned the axiom that age ain't nothing but a number. The 27-voice strong choir - average age 80 - brought a capacity crowd at Somerville Theatre to its feet several times with a tremendously...