The sunset of Sonic Youth: An oral history of the band's final U.S. show
No one knew Sonic Youth was making its last stand — not even Sonic Youth itself.
"It was a period of regrouping. But in spite of some personal problems, it was still business as normal: 'We're going out to do a summer show in our hometown,' " admits co-founder Lee Ranaldo from his New York apartment.
This cycle was not either for Sonic Youth or its fans: Despite a period of relative inactivity, with nearly no shows in eight months, most members of one of American indie rock's most beloved, raucous and best bands assumed they'd be back to work soon enough. Their Friday night show on a sprawling outdoor stage alongside the East River in Brooklyn on Aug. 12, 2011, was simply the latest in their decadelong string of summertime New York sets. They had, as always, recruited an excellent cast of openers: Kurt Vile & the Violators, the emerging pride of Philadelphia, and Wild Flag, a Sleater-Kinney offshoot still a month from releasing its debut LP. Sensing nothing unordinary, especially that they were on the precipice of the end, the band issued only one photo pass to a short-lived New York music blog.
But two months and two days after that concert, the night would become the stuff of legend and history, not only for an unorthodox set list where Sonic Youth performed several songs for the first time in decades but also because it was, indeed, the end. The personal problems Ranaldo sensed exploded into public view: After three decades as bandmates and 27 years of marriage, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore — the first couple of indie rock, a pair whose creative partnership had given countless Gen X disciples life goals — were splitting. With their marriage's fracture, the band would also end. In the years to come, through interviews and memoirs and gossip columns, the source of that split would become clear: a common middle-aged affair.
Sonic Youth played five more shows that November, fulfilling a contractual obligation for a festival swing through South America. Those were hard and perfunctory gigs, so that night in Brooklyn remained special. "I always refer to it as the last show, because it was the last one where we weren't cognizant that we were going to stop playing," says Ranaldo, sighing. "There's a lot of complicated feelings in the aftermath, but we all left that concert feeling like we did a wonderful job."
For that final moment, at least, Sonic Youth's future seemed wide open. As Rose Flag, a superfan who had driven down that day from western Massachusetts, reckoned of the night: "Sonic Youth had lasted 30 years, so what was another 30 years?"
This week, Silver Current Records will release a , previously issued online as a pandemic-era Bandcamp exclusive. In retrospect, it is almost impossible to hear the strange set of non-hits as an onstage conversation about the scandal that would soon engulf Sonic Youth. Moore sings of cheating cads during "Psychic Hearts," a relative obscurity from a solo album. Gordon commands the crowd to "support the power of women / use the power of man."
