YOUTH: PURE PUNK

There’s nothing like a little Sonic Youth at 2:30 in the morning--especially when shared with 1,500 or so strangers-turned-intimate-acquaintances in the packed, unventilated Scream club.

Anyone got an aspirin?

Actually, Saturday’s show was not the headache-inducing experience Sonic Youth’s reputation would have led you to expect, as the New York quartet has refined its noise-of-art sound to the point that it could almost be called restrained and--yes--pleasurable. Still, the typical Sonic Youth approach is to plant the seed of a song in the listener’s head and then go after it with a jackhammer. Few songs in the first half of the hour-plus set got past one verse before being broken apart into some sort of fascinating feedback and dissonance explosion.

But then primary singer Thurston Moore put down his guitar and shouted, “One-two-three-four, “ and the band concentrated on pure punk, culminating with an encore of the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat.” While this utter frivolity helped dissolve any hint of arty pretense, the band hadn’t fully explored the possibilities of its more ambitious and distinctive material before it turned away from it.