Sonic Youth delivered two full hours of new music to a sold-out audience at the Fillmore last night, for the last of their three dates in San Francisco in support of their latest effort, "A Thousand Leaves."
More than half of what the band dished out fell into the category of non-traditional noise, and most of it was new, coming from "A Thousand Leaves" and its 1995 predecessor, "Washing Machine."
Among these new songs were the latest single "Sunday," "Female Mechanic Now On Duty," "Karen Koltrane," and "Hits of Sunshine," which the band dedicated to the late poet Allen Ginsberg. In between these and other songs, the band performed its trademark melange of ambient feedback and distortion. The crowd didn't seem to mind having nothing to sing along with, instead taking in the ornate light, bobbing their heads and shouting out requests for "Sister."
But it was not a night for requests. It was not a night of "Kool Thing" or "Bull in the Heather," the band's more recognizable radio hits from the '90s. Nor was it a night for older classics such as "Sister" or "Teenage Riot." The few songs that longtime Sonic Youth fans might have recognized came during the encore, when guitarist Thurston Moore dedicated two songs, "Shadow of a Doubt" from "Evol" and "Death Valley '69" to Jason Knuth, the music director at a San Francisco college radio station, who committed suicide this past March. Moore advised the crowd to head on over later that night to another local club, the Bottom of the Hill, where several bands were playing a benefit concert for suicide prevention in Knuth's honor.
Earlier in the day, Sonic Youth made a surprise appearance at a local store, Amoeba Records in the Haight Ashbury where they played to a crowd gathered at the moment inside. They performed a 1-hour set on the rainy day, after which Thurston Moore stuck around to sign autographs.
Sonic Youth move on tonight to Los Angeles.
