“Sacred Trickster”
from the album The Eternal
2009
iTunes
In advance of the June 9 release of their new album, The Eternal, Sonic Youth‘s new label Matador is offering a free MP3 version of the album’s first track, “Sacred Trickster.“ The song’s something to get excited about, and maybe even dance to — no mean feat when you consider this is a band who’ve always seemed to make soundtracks for people listen to while they stand around smoking and trying to look cool.
After years of absorbing a little too much squeaky-clean production at Geffen Records, I figured Sonic Youth had traded in their edge in favour of resting on their we-are-indie-pioneers laurels. But the move to Matador has clearly reinvigorated the band. “Sacred Trickster” features some of the strange, discordant experimentation that was SY’s stock in trade throughout the group’s late-’80s, early-’90s heyday, alongside a straight-ahead hooky chorus that will convert those who were always intimidated by the band’s wall of cacophonous sounds.
The 2:11 single breezes by at such a click that you might be fooled into thinking it’s unbelievably simple. Not so. Sure, it begins with some wonky, deliberately on-again, off-again guitar chords that recall both the New York no wave bands and some of the gleefully inept experimentation of Slanted and Enchanted-era Pavement. But “Sacred Trickster” progresses in small increments and layers, accelerating away from those initial chords toward more urgent tail-chasing guitars and drums, before finally giving way (somewhere around verse 2) to a frenzied section where the guitars mimic the sound of a frantic moth’s fluttering wings. This rivals some of the best cuts on SY’s Goo.
Kim Gordon helps to propel things forward, spitting out infectious lines like “Getting dizzy, sitting around” with a little extra force and enthusiasm than she’s usually known for, and investing her repeated “uh-huhs” at the chorus with a perfectly insolent edge. When it comes time for her to cry out, “What’s it like to be a girl in a band?” it’s a meta question that needs no answer. Judging from this insanely addictive first single, being in a band is something that the members of SY have mastered several times over.