On these five mostly instrumental recordings from between 2000 and 2010, Sonic Youth dig in and stretch out.
“I want to tour with Phish,” declared Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore in 1998. “The kind of music we make is more in tune with their aesthetic than it is with any K-Rock or Geffen rock aesthetic. So it’s only fair to us, and to that audience. We deserve each other.” Fellow guitarist Lee Ranaldo later claimed that Moore “has probably never even heard Phish… Ninety percent of that is just him bullshitting.” But Moore had a point. Sonic Youth had always had a proclivity for long, improv-leaning songs, from their self-titled debut’s “The Good and the Bad” to EVOL’s “Xpressway to Yr Skull” to Washing Machine’s “Diamond Sea.” If there was any space for that kind of rock experimentation in the mainstream, it was what Moore called “the arena that the [Grateful] Dead created, and that Phish have bit into. We want in.”
Sonic Youth never really entered into that circuit, but the posthumous, nearly-all-instrumental In/Out/In shows the New York band to be spiritual kin with the post-Dead tradition that has held remarkably steady since the 1990s. Taken from various recordings made between 2000 and 2010, the five tracks here could be called “jams,” though Ranaldo (an avowed longtime Dead fan) recently demurred, preferring to label them “extrapolations.” That’s fair, since these sometimes repetitive, often solo-less pieces owe more to Glenn Branca’s forward-driving guitar symphonies than to the Dead’s spacier excursions.
Still, these songs revel in their freedom, and the first decade of the millennium was an especially free time for Sonic Youth. They settled into their Geffen contract, without much pressure to score hits; they owned a studio, Echo Canyon, built with Lollapalooza headliner money, so they could record anything they played; and they ran their own label, SYR, through which they could release music that might not fit on major-label albums. That all explains not only why the tracks on In/Out/In exist at all, but also why they sound so coherent together despite being recorded in different years, locations, and situations. Having room to explore—or simply just to do what they wanted—helped Sonic Youth deepen their distinctive sound.
Hence the floating, Kim Gordon-hummed “In & Out,” recorded in 2010 at a soundcheck in California and the band’s New Jersey studio, sounds like a dream version of the more nightmarish “Out & In,” recorded a decade earlier at Echo Canyon. (Both tracks appeared on Three Lobed’s 2010 compilation Not The Spaces You Know, But Between Them, for which I wrote liner notes.) In turn, “Machine,” an outtake from 2009’s The Eternal, plays like a condensed version of “Out & In,” with Ranaldo and Moore’s chopping chords punching through drummer Steve Shelley’s beats like they’re dodging traffic. In/Out/In’s best track is opener “Basement Contender,” an escalating journey that recalls prime Velvet Underground outtakes, and—no doubt because it was made at Moore and Gordon’s Massachusetts home—exudes a mood of happy playing with no goal other than to play happily.
In fact, much of In/Out/In’s charm comes from the feeling that you’re hanging out in Sonic Youth’s practice room, watching them improvise the day away. The band’s demise was surprising, leaving no chance for a farewell album or tour. Ranaldo and Shelley have diligently tended to their archives, and Shelley mentioned recently that there’s not much studio material left, so it’s possible that this will be their last non-live full-length. If so, it’s an apt one. Sonic Youth were always a very social band—supporting fellow musicians, self-releasing records with fans in mind, and generally making people feel part of an informal club that the four members provided a soundtrack for. In that sense, In/Out/In is as Sonic Youth as it gets.
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