Sonic Youth Sign to Matador Records, Prep 2009 Album

The biggest free agents in indie rock have found a new home, as Sonic Youth will release their next album on Matador Records. Sonic Youth were previously on DGC/Geffen from 1990's Goo until 2006's Rather Ripped, but as Thurston Moore told Rolling Stone recently, the band looked forward to "returning to the indie world again." They'll do so on Matador, home of Stephen Malkmus, Yo La Tengo and Cat Power and onetime label of artists like Pavement, Liz Phair and Teenage Fanclub. Moore also told RS that so far he's written "a half-dozen song ideas" for the band's sixteenth studio album, due out "sometime in 2009." The band also recently premiered two new songs at a concert in Brooklyn. "For Matador, the opportunity to work in partnership with a group who've made such an profound impact on our roster/hometown/collective consciousness was one to jump at," the label said in a statement.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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