Tuesday marked a huge day for music releases. Sonic Youth dropped their highly anticipated "The Eternal" and the mighty Mos Def released his fourth solo offering, "The Ecstatic." The big hype going into "The Eternal" was that Sonic Youth was finally releasing an album on an independent label, Matador Records. There wasn't any real hype going into "The Ecstatic," just a lot of grumbling that Mos was probably going to pitch the third strike that would totally decimate his music career, effectively turning him into the thinking man's Will Smith. Needless to say, both artists are coming from entirely different career trajectories, and I'm happy to report that both albums are worth your hard-earned cash.

"The Eternal" is going to get compared to a lot of other Sonic Youth albums. It's inevitable when you have a career that long and successful, people are going to want to know what they're getting into. It's a really unfair way of explaining this album, though, because you can really hear the stylistic impressions from their earlier work. Kim's shouting on "Sacred Trickster takes a page right out of "Goo," Shelley's drumming on "Malibu Gas Station" has fills I remember headbanging to from "Daydream Nation," and "Leaky Lifeboat" starts out like a lot of songs did on "Sister." If I had to pigeonhole "The Eternal" with a partner album, though, I would have to go with "Dirty." Both have a shitload of fight in them, but while "Dirty" was an uncontrollable, murderous assault in response to Nirvana's "Nevermind," "The Eternal" is much more calculated, and lands it's punches more often.

Perhaps it is the aggresion of "Sacred Trickster" which surprised me most. The last three releases from Sonic Youth had a much tamer quality to them. Murray Street was their first release absent of any major spiralling into amplified noise. Sonic Nurse took it a step further with their most tuneful melodies yet. Finally, 2006's "Rather Ripped" came about as close as Sonic Youth could ever come to making an acoustic album, electric guitars without 12 pedals for the sound to travel through. "The Eternal" comes out, guns-blazing, with a one two punch in "Sacred Trixter" and "Anti-Orgasm." From here, the album decides to teeter between angry "fuck you, we're not old yet" protests, and reflective soundscapes that still remain approachable for the non-diehard fan. The pinnaccle of the album, though, is four songs in. Antenna is a slow-chugging surfer-esque rising sun of a tune. Imagine Band of Horses performing during the paranoid phase of a LSD induced trip and you begin to approach the mood it evokes, defiant yet timid all at the same moment.

Wrapped in these tunes, however, lie some very poingnant lyrics, most of them pain induced. "You know you'd hurt me once, and you know that you'll hurt me again" culminate the separation outlined in "No Way." Or "warm blood and a dirty crime / the radio's play nothing when she so far away." These are the types of lines that Thurston Moore was meant to croon with his shaggy appearence and quiet demeanor. Meanwhile, Kim bitches "What's it like to be a girl in the band? I don't quite understand." I've never been a fan of her delivery, she has the huskiest voice of the bunch, and it's especially antagonizing to the ear since she usually is desegnated singing duties when the band is already in attack mode. Her vocals work at times (I can't imagine anyone else singing "The Sprawl" or "Kool Thing") just not on this album.

Sonic Youth has never been about singing pretty, though. They truly are indie royalty, and have every right to dub their albums "The Eternal," "The Everlasting," "The Fucking Best," whatever, they earned it. This release is a summation without being valedictory, and it's probably the best entry point into their catalogue other than the impeccable, untouchable, masterful, orgasmic, fantastical, superlative-inducing "Daydream Nation."

Mos Def, unfortuneately, comes from a much more estranged background in his most recent release "The Ecstatic." I was first introduced to Mos Def's work with "The New Danger" his second release, and unbeknownst to me at the time, a wildy disappointing sophomore slump. I was one of the few who enjoyed the album in spite of the bullshit singing passages and dragged out instrumental introductions for each song. Working backwards, I found out about the universally beloved "Black on Both Sides" which set me (and the rest of the world) to be entirely put off by the piece of shit that was "True Magic" (Oh excuse me, "Tru3 Magic", I forgot that idiotic puntuation makes you a "jee3enYu$" I'm looking at you will.i.am and Tech N9ne). But here is Mos, back from banishment, with a release as poetic as his debut offering.

Mos makes his best work with a constang barrage of words, no refrains, no chorus, no sing-song autotune, just straight rhymes. With this, however, comes shorter track lengths, and jarring shifts in style. At times, this gets annoying as fuck. Groovin' in the middle of "The Embassy" and then being thrown into the completely unnecessary "No Hay Nada Mas" (all in spainish) really pissed me off. Ditto, going from "Pistola" to "Pretty Dancer." Everything else works just peachy, though. The bite size chunks help. His rhymes come at a mile a minute, so staying on one subject too long is going to get any listener entangled. With the YouTube clip worthy freestyles, though, each song lets him flex muscles withough digging himself into too deep of a hole.

The production varies wildly in intensity, but there's a world music influence throughout, it just manifests itself in different ways. "Twilite Speedball" has an enormously ominous and boastful horn section, while "Supermagic" is hypnotic with it's wailing vocals that sound ripped right out of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. It all takes a backseat to his wordplay, though. Odd references ("when it's really real it's even realer than the matrix"), boasts ("life is a game I heard some homie say, well I just came to win 'cause I don't fucking play") and clever rhymes ("we need to evolve like Darwin if you're gonna be my darlin'") all work their way in. It's so much more rewarding to listen to thatn the repeated lines in his previous work. Overall, if you have a love of concious rap (A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, The Roots) this is going to find a home in your collection.

What a great week for music.

-Zak Krone

What I'm also listening to:
The Knife "Silent Shout" - Spacey icelandic electronica. Sigor Ros with some balls.
David Bowie "Low" - His best album. Sorry Ziggy.
The Gay Witch Abortion "Mavrick" - Taking the torch from Dead Meadow and running twice as fast with it.


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