It’s the 20th year anniversary of this album, which means that for some reason there are a couple appreciations of it appearing in the music press. I find this interesting, because Sonic Nurse is not exactly a landmark album. It’s not Sonic Youth’s so-called “return to form” like 2002’s Murray Street, or the final album of their career like 2009’s The Eternal. Personally, I wouldn’t put it in my top seven SY albums. But it is a very good late period album by one of the best bands. 

 

For a band with “youth” in their name, Sonic Youth never sounded particularly young. They never sang like young people, or wrote songs about young people things. Their artistic inclinations ran more abstract and structural than libidonal, which probably meant that their thirteenth studio album had a better chance of sounding good than a band of similarly aged rockers who were still firing from their dicks/pussies. Ironically SR would be undone by the wandering libido of its most eternally youthful member, a guitarist who blew up his marriage with the bassist and took the band down with it. 

 

I think people are writing about a mid-tier Sonic Youth album 20 years after its release because, like me, they miss the band and will take the opportunity to relisten to their catalog.