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nyc ghosts & flowers
by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 66 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.4 out of 10
based on 18 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

LABEL: Interscope
RELEASE DATE: 16 May 2000
DISCS: 1 disc
GENRE(S): Rock, Indie, Alternative

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Village Voice (Consumer Guide)
Its avant parts are more listenable--nay, beautiful--than anything on Washing Machine if not A Thousand Leaves.
Read Full Review
80
CDNow
While a little too dense in spots, NYC Ghosts & Flowers is 42 minutes of the most neatly executed pop noir you'll hear.
Read Full Review
80
MTV.com
Ghosts & Flowers, like Sonic Youth's landmark Daydream Nation album, forces the listener to listen very carefully for subtle moments of beauty amidst the near silence and the absolute chaos.
Read Full Review
80
Checkout.com
NYC Ghosts & Flowers yields no easy accessibility, as it becomes darker and more abstract by the minute.
80
Magnet
Doesn't quite reach greatness, but it grows and changes with every listen... [#46, p.92]
80
New Musical Express
While it captures the contrary, questing essence of Sonic Youth surer than any SY release since 'Washing Machine', it also never betrays the sluggish, arrogant lack of self-editing that made '98's 'A Thousand Leaves' so bilious and unlovable, and the band's self-released 'SYR' EPs so hit and miss.
Read Full Review
80
Alternative Press (Record Of The Week)
A dark, nervous-sounding album, a demanding and disruptive listen that only grows thornier over its 45-minute duration.
Read Full Review
80
Ink Blot Magazine
Closer than any previous mass-market Sonic Youth album to the avant-garde sound that's always popped up in their extracurricular work.
Read Full Review
71
Wall of Sound
The band members unleash meditative, self-consciously poetic jams, solidifying their status as the hipster's Phish.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com
The unruly, bad-dream aftertaste of this material echoes the quartet's early records from the 1980s... Even while there isn't a single song here that holds together from beginning to end, even as the music makes only itself felt in halting jigsaw fashion... the album has a gloomy, unaccommodating tenacity that's hard to shake.
Read Full Review
70
Sonicnet
Certain moments find the quartet keying in on the same fugal intertwining of beauty and dissonance that Television explored back in the late 1970s.
Read Full Review
70
Billboard
The collection either encapsulates Sonic Youth's most endearing or annoying qualities, depending on how one feels about the band and the spoken-word poetics from Kim Gordon.
Read Full Review
60
Mojo
In the end, it's surprisingly worth it for the few great, strange tracks.
Read Full Review
55
Nude As The News
The big downside is the lyrics.
Read Full Review
50
All Music Guide
The album lacks the visceral, immediate impact of the best beat poetry and frequently seems fueled by self-consciousness instead of stream-of-consciousness.
Read Full Review
50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
But the album as a whole--which, at eight songs in 42 minutes, barely exceeds EP length--is woefully uneven, with producer Jim O'Rourke indulging the band in some truly ill-conceived whims.
Read Full Review
20
Select
The songs suffer from a lazy approach and the relentless repetition of unengaging chord patterns. [July 2000, p.106]
0
Pitchfork
An unfathomable album which will be heard in the squash courts and open mic nights of deepest hell.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this album is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

S R. gave it a7:
Its sonic youth, take it or leave it. that pitchfork 'review' shouldn't be counted. there are very very few albums ever that deserve a 0 and this certainly isn't one of them. scumbags.

Jon L gave it a5:
Some cool, interesting tracks where the beat approach actually works (usually Ranaldo's stuff), but most of it is dull or just embarrassing. Unless Ranaldo's writing it all, it's better for them to just hint at this approach rather than attack it outright.

Chronic Ruth gave it a10:
I haven't heard this one. But Sonic Youth is a real good bad with mostly real good songs. I like it when they just play and play too. Sometimes it seems like maybe just noise or something. That's awesome! I think this album will be real good and you should buy it. I mean who are you to not like a Sonic Youth record? They are like elders in a culture of depravity and utter seriousness. Stare them down and you see yourself, naked, hallucinating in a ditch, imaging that you are a strung rock star, teetering on the edge of the world , with something important left to say, that the public has yet to wrestle, yet to rescue from your mind, and in just one magic second, you will speak your final peace. Now. Sex is death. Such dedication forewarns of a life that is doomed to end in repeat.

Gustavo A gave it a10:
You have to close your eyes and let the music takes you to unknown places. Its UNIQUE

Marcus G gave it a 10:
An incredibly iconoclastic arc of 8 non-songs that has to be their most perfect album. The city is their sole muse but the result is no utopia. There's loss and longing and there's protest. But when that is what sets off the sparks, you are thankful for all the concrete that must become cracked, awe-struck by the histories that have to haunt us. This work is focused, heartfelt, and strangely elegant. It may not be their rockingest best. Any of the tracks laid out on their own suffer more than the band's previous singles and NYCG&F will not create many converts. Still, this release is a pinnacle achievement at the outset of their New York City trilogy of recordings and a strong claim that when it comes to urban noise nobody does it better.

Andy gave it a 9:
A 56?? Seems it's hip to hate the Youth these days.

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