Sonic Youth Shows Few Signs of Aging

Sonic Youth is to indie rock what director Jim Jarmusch is to indie film: Both codified distinctive styles and attitudes that spread like a contagion during the early ‘80s, only to see their own pioneering work eventually overshadowed by their pupils. In the band’s case, these descendants range from Pavement to Nirvana.

Now, 17 years after it emerged from New York’s downtown art scene, Sonic Youth is less trailblazer than keeper of the flame. At the Veterans Wadsworth Theater on Thursday, the quartet rumbled through its material (mostly from its new “A Thousand Leaves” album) with slippery finesse.

Perhaps Sonic Youth’s most recognizable trait is its use of noise as a compositional tool.

Noise abstractions remain ground zero for the band; every song on Thursday sprang from a building crescendo of ghostly feedback as well as sounds produced by guitar strings that were plucked, bent and scraped. Melodies would then announce themselves with a series of down-strummed, modal eighth notes or two chord vamps, only to recede again and disintegrate into further noise explorations.

Every musician knew his role onstage: Mop-topped beanstalk guitarist Thurston Moore came off like a deranged version of Wes Montgomery, reeling off octave-leaping solos and tremolo-drunk fills, while additional guitarists Lee Renaldo and Kim Gordon laid the chords on fast and thick.

Though the band relied too heavily on stately, mid-tempo material, the evening was enthralling. Sonic Youth, even after all these years, remains capable of transporting its audience to new sonic and emotional plains.