Evolved Sonic Youth blows its 'Leaves' into the State

Sonic Youth brings its mind-saturating, experimental formula for poetic guitar orchestration to the State Theatre in Detroit on Thursday night. These New York City audio architects will perform a new portfolio of epic, artistically distorted symphonies from their highly anticipated new album, "A Thousand Leaves," available to the public on Tuesday, May 12.

The four members of Sonic Youth began developing the concepts for their new album nearly a year ago. The band debuted instrumental seeds of songs to come at the Free Tibet Concert.

Courtesy of Geffen Records, Inc. There may not be a mosh pit, but Sonic Youth still promises to please at the State Theatre on Thursday.

A trilogy of records with premature material were eventually distributed independently by the band. These hard-to-find studio recordings consist of novel, expressionistic soundscapes and poetic sketches lacking coherent structure or any attempt to follow the exhausted verse-chorus-verse formula.

This past autumn, the band was invited to perform its challenging improvisational material at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Manhattan - a venue reserved for classical musicians - as well at Neil Young's private party at CBGB's.

Although both performances were revered by critics, acclaim is nothing new for these alternative rock pioneers. Since the era of Studio 54 and disco, Sonic Youth has evolved further artistically with each successive album than most bands do throughout their careers.

Thursday night's performance will probably not be the abrasive grunge onslaught that it may have been five years ago. Sonic Youth's latest material is more likely to manipulate the furthest depths of the mind in a hallucinatory fashion rather than generate a mosh pit. The highly amplified noise engineers still possess the ability to craft perception-altering feedback excursions, but they now choose to do it with graceful dynamic movements.

REVIEW
	Sonic Youth Thursday, 7:30 p.m. State Theatre

New songs like "Karen Koltrane" and "Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)" shift from hushed guitar interplay to amplifier ejaculations before concluding minutes later with more elegance than an apocalyptic sunset.

Not all songs share these epic proportions, however. Several songs, such as the wonderfully crafted gem "Sunday," clock in under seven minutes and rely more on tight, unorthodox song structures, indescribable audio textures and mysterious guitar tones in their attempt to achieve artistic merit.

Another interesting element of the new material from "A Thousand Leaves" is its evolution. The concept behind the band's trilogy of studio demos was to showcase compositional evolution. The catchy, six-minute pop song on the new album entitled "The Ineffable Me" began as a 22-minute instrumental exercise in rhythm. It was originally called "Slaapkamers Met Slagroom," and consisted of three guitars - one clean, one colorful, one dirty - cooperating in a multi-layered guitar riff along soothing and booming percussion.

Don't expect a traditional greatest-hits style performance from Sonic Youth. The band prefers to continually debut its latest excursions. There will be a few favorites like "Teenage Riot" and "Schizophrenia" sprinkled in the mix. But due to the lengthy improvisational manner of the new material, the show may resemble something similar to a late-60s Grateful Dead musical trip.

Also keep in mind that the quartet's previous collection, "Washing Machine," was acclaimed for its intellectual challenge. Sonic Youth's new material is no different. Each listen has new revelations hidden within layers of musical stimuli. Unlike the recycled MTV-style commercial music meant to be consumed by the masses, "A Thousand Leaves" is designed to intellectually challenge concepts of modern music.

05-11-98