My god, what a difference a generation can make. The last sold out show I saw at The Fillmore was The Mountain Goats, and the crowd was pushy, sloppy, and young (still a great show). The SY crowd by comparison was courteous, excited, and full of dancing energy. Old people can be awesome concert-goers. We were treated first to openers Sic Alps, who played a familiar brand of psychedelic folk-rock with occasional bursts of noise. After a brief smoke break, we returned to find the drummer switched, which resulted in an even stronger performance.
I could feel the floor moving when Sonic Youth walked onstage. The dancefloor was packed in tight, and Thurston fed off of the electricity like a drug. He’s still so boyish, and boys can’t feign aloofness when they’re giddy. Good crowds will do that to you.
As Sonic Youth continue to generate new material after being on the scene for over 30 years, their setlists tend to focus on the new stuff. Songs from The Eternal dominated the setlist and sometimes stretched out to the 14-minute mark. Similar to a jam band experience, but of course too noisy and calculated for such a label, watching Sonic Youth is like watching a modern symphony—a really bad-ass symphony. Despite playing almost exactly the same setlist as the last time I saw them, SY played an epiphanic show that could’ve saved lives and bludgeoned eardrums.
Thurston dedicated “Leaky Lifeboat” to his daughter, Coco, who on a recent trip to City Lights Poetry Room observed that it was “too quiet.” “Antennae” recalled the lovelorn lethargy of Murray Street’s “The Empty Page,” with melodic guitar lines plucked over a sea of analog delay and static white noise. “Hey Joni” was so fast and heavy—you couldn’t hear any hint of a tennis wrist-injury from Lee Ranaldo—it moved from avant-garde punk to dirty metal riffs faster than you could say “collision.”
From beginning to end, SY never once took it easy. What seemed like a holy-fuck-it’s-Kool-Thing moment was actually “Sacred Trickster,” which is an easy song to like, but it becomes another beast live. “‘Cross the Breeze” drove everyone into a dancing frenzy, with 20-year-old urban outfitters head-banging with 45 year-old art professors. Steve Shelley’s frantic double-time beats pummeled the song into speed metal territory. They closed with “Death Valley ‘69,” leaving us drained, but euphoric. Thurston was the last member to walk offstage as classical music blared from purple-lit speakers, a messianic image only Mr. Moore can pull off.
[Photo: Charlie Cravero]
