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Oct 17, 2014Purists will always pine for Sonic Youth and their glory days, but with a band and album this good, who cares about the past?
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Classic Rock MagazineDec 17, 2014Accessibly challenging, this isn't Moore's very best day, but it's up there. [Nov 2014, p.95]
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Dec 11, 2014In sum, The Best Day is the Sonic Youth album that Sonic Youth fans feared would never happen in the wake of the band’s split in 2011.
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Oct 30, 2014He navigates through colorized thickets of tone on the long songs with the knowing confidence of a veteran wilderness guide.
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Oct 21, 2014The Best Day is neither derivative nor weak. In fact, it’s another enduring release from an always reliable rocker.
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Oct 20, 2014A little bit new, but mostly the same, then. The Best Day is the refreshing sound of Moore addressing familiar musical themes with renewed energy.
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Oct 19, 2014Both comforting and discomfiting, The Best Day recalls prime Youth, when their tense experimental attitude dovetailed with often sour but instantly accessible pop melodies.
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Oct 16, 2014Whether its anger is aimed at an individual or an establishment, the energy on the Best Day sounds like the conspiracy before the rebellion, rather than the anarchy itself.
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Q MagazineOct 6, 2014[The album] is in turns seething and sweet. [Nov 2014, p.115]
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UncutOct 6, 2014Dissonance and propulsion remain watchwords. [Nov 2014, p.78]
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Oct 6, 2014As is typical with Moore, the vocal melodies on The Best Day are mostly afterthoughts that usually just blithely follow the guitar parts. Fortunately, this weakness is minimized by the fact that most of the riffs, rendered via a pristinely engineered dual-guitar attack, are excellent.
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Oct 22, 2014What makes The Best Day work is that the songs play to the band’s strengths, especially the interplay between Moore and Sedwards.
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Oct 21, 2014The Best Day is not particularly provocative or demanding, nor accessible enough to bring in newcomers to his dependable fan base. But, in getting back in the saddle after a rocky couple of years, it’s enough that he’s got the energy and ideas to continue to evolve in worthwhile ways.
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Oct 20, 2014The Best Day proves to be not so much a revelatory, introspective antidote to Moore’s best-known band as a serviceable, equally high-voltage substitute for it.
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The WireDec 2, 2014It's pleasantly melodic post-punk pop-rock with a handful of less conventional moves thrown in. [Oct 2014, p.58]
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Oct 23, 2014This isn’t the sound of him stretching himself, or pushing boundaries--it’s the sound of him comfortably in his sweet spot, and that’s no bad thing.
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Oct 21, 2014This is the best Sonic Youth-related album of the new decade so far, and the best Sonic Youth-related album since 2004’s Sonic Nurse.... Sure, it’s not perfect. Broadly speaking, the sound is too clean and Steve Shelley ain't the drummer he used to be.
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Oct 21, 2014Nobody does dissonant chug like Moore, and The Best Day offers plenty of SY-ish thrills.
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Oct 20, 2014This is the closest we’re likely to get to a new Sonic Youth album, and The Best Day is a great reminder of what made that band so special.
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Oct 19, 2014While the newer additions to Thurston's muse are all well and good, The Best Day is most exciting when he returns to his most familiar trademarks, again investigating a sound that has spawned generations of imitators but still sounds like no one else.
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Oct 20, 2014The eight songs that make up The Best Day represent a more measured and balanced record than fans might expect from Moore, but that shouldn’t be taken as a compromise of his irritable guitar rock instincts.
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Oct 15, 2014The Best Day doesn’t offer much in the way of compelling us to venture forth; that is, even if we were inclined to in the first place.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 15
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Mixed: 3 out of 15
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Negative: 1 out of 15
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Oct 22, 2014