1) After two decades as a a four-piece, Sonic Youth have officially become a quintet with the addition of post-rock musician and noise-loving producer Jim O'Rourke (who was on their last CD NYC Ghosts and Flowers and produced Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

2) Membership changes in veteran bands can be recipes for disaster -- but as usual, SY snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with Murray Street, the latest in a string of impressive albums and a disc that actually finds the band breaking some new ground.

3) Along with the downtown garage-punk and complex noise-rock epics you expect from Sonic Youth, Murray Street also has some of the band's cleanest and most straightforward songs in years, with some clean, crisp guitar lines, hummable melodies and even a catchy chorus or two.

4) For the most part, O'Rourke seems to blend in the with others rather effortlessly, layering his trademark scratch 'n' drone textural soundscapes here and there -- most obviously on the punk-romance centrepiece Karen Revisited -- but keeping them fairly unobtrusive.

5) O'Rourke can stay -- for now.

Track Listing
1. Free City Rhymes
02. Renegade Princess
03. Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)
04. Small Flowers Crack Concrete
05. Side2side
06. StreamXsonik Subway
07. NYC Ghosts & Flowers
08. Lightnin' -->