Sonic Youth: The Destroyed Room : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

New York art-punk heroes S onic Youth have long cultivated a dense, dirty guitar sound you can completely get lost in. This band-curated, mostly vocal-free collection of outtakes and B sides draws largely from the twenty-first century, when that sound was more ruminative than raw. Unsurprisingly, it's a mixed bag: The lengthy jams that bookend the disc have their moments - weird scales, tension-and-release, riffs you remember - but most of the cuts get by on their chilled-out mood as much as anything. "Blink" would have fit nicely on '98's autumnal masterwork, A Thousand Leaves, and the noise jam "Queen Anne Chair" is kind of proggy and rather beautiful. Nonessential stuff, for sure, but worthwhile for anyone interested in hearing old pros kicking back and working out ideas.