This Year's Rock Music

Saturday night a free concert by Sonic Youth will be held at the Thunderbird Hotel's newly renovated performance space. In 2006, the Village Voice's Robert Christgau called Sonic Youth "the best band in the universe." The band was formed in 1981 on New York's Lower East Side by guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo and bassist Kim Gordon; drummer Steve Shelley joined the group in 1986. Moore and Ranaldo had previously performed in the "guitar orchestras" organized by Glenn Branca in the early eighties, and a novel approach to the electric guitar has always been an essential part of the band's signature sound. The group experiments with unorthodox tunings, layers of overtones, and song forms that veer from punk rants to blasts of atonal dissonance to extended jams to tightly structured three-minute pop tunes. In 2006 Sonic Youth turned 25 and released their 20th album, Rather Ripped. The band tours frequently and will play their first dates in China later this year, in addition to performing their classic 1988 double-album Daydream Nation (inducted into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2006) at festivals in Europe. The Sonic Youth concert is co-sponsored by Ballroom Marfa and the Thunderbird Hotel.