Sonic Nurse

Sonic Nurse is better than 90 percent of new rock, but with younger combos like Lightning Bolt and Liars stealing their thunder, these well-meaning vets come off as old and in the way. [Jul 2004, p.134]

Every song but one falls fully developed in the five- to seven-minute ballpark, brimming with enough dissonant wizardry, smart vocal imagery, and tonal shades of rock to fly the freak flag like no aging rockers ever have.

Their most songful release since the major-label hellos Goo and Dirty, and by most standards their best since 1988's pivotal Daydream Nation. [#27, p.144]

Whilst Moore’s meandering stops Sonic Nurse from going that much needed extra mile, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo are on reassuringly good form.

What emerges is Sonic Youth at complete ease with themselves and their music, operating simultaneously at the peak of their powers and with a powerful, audacious restraint.

‘Nurse’ is the closest to creating a landmark on parallel with ‘Daydream Nation’ they’ve come since that particular record's nameday in ‘88, and in it’s dense textures it maybe signals the extinction of the antediluvian No Wave idyll; a Robert Zimmerman trip that somehow got mixed up with Joni Mitchell, Black Flag and a conceptualist oddball.

Sonic Nurse is the happy medium they've been craving. The songs, despite being mostly over five minutes long, are all to the point without feeling meandering.... The balance between noise and melody is right, with each emerging and vanishing at just the right point.

This ain't another Daydream Nation, but Nurse is a good cure for what ails the airwaves.

No big revelations, but plenty of rewards. [11 Jun 2004, p.123]

A gorgeous, bona fide gem. [#11, p.92]

The krang of album’s past seems more an afterthought as the band explores the natural textures of layered guitar and lumbering bass tracks.

A better-than-average Sonic Youth album. [#64, p.106]

Sonic Nurse is not... a classic rock record. And it's not a classic Sonic Youth record. It's an excursion, into corners weird and corners familiar. [Jun 2004, p.100]

Sounds like a brilliant album by a lesser band. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

Sonic Nurse could be the best guitar rock album since, well, Murray St.

While Sonic Nurse isn't quite as strong as its predecessor, it's equally as imbued with instrumental dexterity and impressively coherent ideas.

Sonic Nurse finds them embracing and sifting through the finer moments of their past over the course of 10 outstanding tracks.

Finds them revelling in bursts of noise and awkwardness, but more surprisingly perhaps, taking as much comfort in sweet melody. [Jul 2004, p.124]

The guitar feedback... hasn't vanished, yet this is Sonic Youth's most accessible album since 1992's Dirty. [24 Jun 2004, p.175]

It's [Kim] Gordon's tracks that make the strongest impact.

A strangely enervated Sonic Youth record, one that exchanges Murray Street's golden-years vigor for a sad sense of duty. [Jul 2004, p.108]

A fairly average jaunt into familiar indie rock territory.

Sonic Nurse, if not proof of a band bursting with fresh ideas, is at least fresh-sounding.

On the whole, Sonic Nurse compiles a laid-back hour of elaborate plucking and rhythm from five veteran musicians who reserve musical violence and poetic anger for when it feels most appropriate.

Lacks the standout tracks of its predecessors.

The emphasis this time around is on poppier melodies, but for all its attention to song form, Sonic Nurse feels more like a collection of exercises than a cohesive album. [#244, p.63]

Sonic Nurse neither disappoints nor surpasses expectations.

The Youth sound rejuvenated. [Jul 2004, p.108]

If 1992's Dirty caught the grunge zeitgeist, Nurse might capture something of indie rock's recent taste for emotional epics. [#7]

Percolates the same melancholy satisfaction and nervous maturity, entropy and growth, in and out--but with an urgency and impulsiveness that risks upsetting the balance.