Sonic Youth Revels in the Cacophony of ‘No Wave’ Rock

For all its noisy abrasiveness, Sonic Youth creates enough of a shroud of mystery around itself that one takes what explanations one can get--even if that means one has to look for said explanations on official band T-shirts.

In the musical murk that the New York quintet offered Saturday before a full house at the Roxy, melodies were scarce. Lyrics were thoroughly unintelligible. Communication was nil. Guitar lines were unharmonized. Tonality was confused.

Ah, did we say confused? Because there, on the way out in the Roxy lobby, was a reminder and a hint as to Sonic Youth’s anti-melodic game plan: T-shirts were being offered for sale, emblazoned with the telling motto “Confusion is Sex” (which also happens to be the title of one of the band’s albums).

In other words, cacophony is bliss?

For some, perhaps--if not necessarily for those of us who are still quite happy to clearly distinguish the joys of physical intimacy from the jar of musical dissonance. If the more old-fashioned dictum that “Pleasure is Sex” still holds any truth, then suffice it to say that Saturday’s show was largely, well, sexless.

Seven years and six records after its birth as part of the New York “No Wave” scene, Sonic Youth--which is becoming increasingly popular in alternative rock circles--remains more determined than ever to push the edge of the guitar-based rock envelope.

More through happenstance and experimentation than training or genius, guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo (who both share lead vocals with bass player Kim Gordon) throw all scales to the wind, use odd tunings not usually employed in any kind of Western pop, and summon up jolting riffs that seem to come from another planet.

The quartet’s rhythm section rocks solidly enough--especially drummer and newest member Steve Shelley, whose unflagging energy and ability to keep a handle on the shifting rhythms and occasional tempo changes may make him Sonic Youth’s MVP right now.

And when make-or-break guitarists Moore and Renaldo are at their least self-indulgent and all four members are playing off each other in some sort of remotely complementary fashion, the songs get by on the sheer tenacity of their grooves.

For all those moments during Saturday’s show, though, there were just as many times when the band let songs stumble to a halt (as opposed to ending them), indulged in feedback antics as numbers wound into crescendos of meaningless dissonance, or otherwise confused envelope-pushing with pure sloppiness--until finally this supremely arrogant cacophony seemed far less blissful than boresome. For Sonic Youth, confusion is a hex.