After 30 years and 15 albums of groundbreaking alt-rock, Sonic Youth split in 2011, in large part because of the acrimonious divorce of bassist <person>Kim Gordon</person> and guitarist <person>Thurston Moore</person>. Since then, while the solo careers of <person>Moore</person> and fellow guitarist <person>Lee Ranaldo</person> have largely followed in the style of late-era Youth, <person>Gordon</person> has written a well-received autobiography, switched to guitar and taken the band’s more experimental mid-1980s Evol and Bad Moon Rising albums as her jumping-off point for her new project with <person>Bill Nace</person>, Body/Head.
Their debut, 2013’s Coming Apart, echoed some of those records’ avant garde tendencies, but it at least nodded to rock orthodoxy. The Switch, however, is far more expansive. Again, there are no beats, just washes of guitar noise; the difference this time is that <person>Gordon</person>’s vocals are now buried so deep within the mix that they are largely unintelligible, and strangely unobtrusive. It works best on the powerful and hypnotic Change My Brain, where the layers of repeating riffs and drones feel as if they are being looped, recalling the otherworldliness of some of <person>William Basinski</person>’s work. Elsewhere, aside from the Sturm und Drang of In the Dark Room, the compositions can sound a little too abstract and free-form, although they do (eventually) reward repeated listening.