Q + A

Sonic Youth: The Road to Murray Street

Words: Jesse Ashlock

What's life like on the southern tip of Manhattan these days?

The area was so desolated while we recorded through the winter. Our soundtrack was the streets, particularly Murray Street, being torn up and patched down a hundred times -- and the rigs hauling off destroyed building relentlessly through the night. We were of the mind to create music as a holistic, positive activity amidst the wreckage. Right now things are contained and daily life is on course throughout the streets of lower Manhattan but the scene will always be charged by its history.

After making music together for more than 20 years, where do you see Sonic Youth five or 10 years down the road?

The future will be a product of hope, creating hopefulness as a model for youth culture -- not to breed hopelessness -- turning the grim reality of so many people's existence into a creative measure which elevates art to the level of truth, what so many young artists seem to want to do through gestures of bewilderment and grief -- but the music has to shine outside and beyond the humility of media. It has to howl through to heaven. Maybe that's what we see as the future.