In the band's 22nd year, the name Sonic Youth is threatening to fall foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. "Ultimate rock chick" Kim Gordon will be 50 next year; Thurston Moore is 43. With strategically placed lighting, only the greying Lee Ranaldo shows any signs of age. However, the name sums up the refreshed bloom of the group's music. Sonic Youth do not sound like a band that has been in existence since 1981.
The New Yorkers are in vintage form, having just made their best record in 14 years. Murray Street - named after the road that hosts their studio, and a wayward airplane engine following September 11 - brings them the classic rock band status that they have often seemed reluctant to embrace. Sonic Youth are usually criticised for making alienating voyages into the avant-garde. However, without such influences as John Zorn and Glenn Branca, it is doubtful whether they would have progressed much from the proto-punk quartet who sang about Charles Manson. The non-rock sonic otherworld is the lifeblood of a sound that is forever evolving.
In this respect their only real peers are Manchester's Fall: while Mark E Smith's inspirations are the sci-fi landscapes of industrial Manchester, Sonic Youth reek of subterranean New York. But it is difficult to imagine Smith sanctioning the use of 20 guitars, racked perfectly at the side of the stage, or dedicating a song to Tracey Emin - as Gordon does Kissability - with such obvious feeling.
They don't do much on stage, nor do they need to. Gordon radiates attitude, while Moore's amiable persona is at odds with the dark, intoxicating squalor of their sound. With his tie and floppy hair, new guitarist Jim O'Rourke looks incongruously like a college boy who has been corrupted by the wild bunch.
The set takes in all of 1988's classic Daydream Nation and Murray Street, with the latter's Empty Page and Disconnection Notice trouncing some of the old favourites. And after 21 years, 90 minutes and three encores, Sonic Youth are still playing with the gleeful enthusiasm with which they began.
· Sonic Youth play Shepherd's Bush Empire, London W12 (020-7771 2000), June 24 and 25.
