CD reviews: Sonic Youth; Eels

POP/ROCK

Sonic Youth, "The Eternal" (Matador)

The first thing to know about the group's 21st album is that its songs aren't as tightly shaped as those on the last one, "Rather Ripped." That might not have anything to do with Sonic Youth's shift back to an independent label, Matador, after 16 years of recording for Geffen. It might make you remember "Washing Machine" and "A Thousand Leaves," from 1995 and 1998, from a similar stretch in an earlier cycle of tighten and loosen. After some success in the early '90s, the band members had gone back to the idea of playing for themselves, exercising the imagination in songs that grew comfortable with their own ritualized awkwardness, disharmony and hypnosis.

The second thing to know is that Sonic Youth's confusion and chance have settled into a standardized language. You can see its strategies of instrumental ebb and flow coming at 50 paces as tones clash and resolve, rise and fall, and the whole band floats elegantly into endings.

But the rise of Kim Gordon (pictured) as Sonic Youth's crucial wild card continues. She played bass from the start in 1981, but by 2000 newer members took up a lot of that role. She played guitar, too, but her input was hard to distinguish amid the dramatic face-offs of the other guitarists, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. (On "The Eternal" she plays only guitar.) She always sang, but diffusely, mockingly. She didn't always get around a song, hold it down, control it, bring you close -- you know, be a singer. Now she does it with authority.

So here's a Sonic Youth record in which Gordon sings all the best stuff. It begins with a short, hard and self-referential rock song, "Sacred Trickster." It ends with the psychedelic folk of "Massage the History," the record's sleeper stunner. It's her stock in trade: a calling-into-darkness narrative.

BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES

Eels, "Hombre Lobo" (Vagrant)

"I am an hombre lobo," Mark Oliver Everett howls on "Tremendous Dynamite." That he steals the cadence of Howlin' Wolf's "Back Door Man" is just one example of the sly wit typical of Eels albums. He's also alluding to one of his own songs, "Dog Faced Boy" from 2001's "Souljacker," and "Hombre Lobo" is in part the story of the dog boy turned wolfman. It's subtitled "12 Songs of Desire," and desire is a scary thing in "Lobo's" world, simmering with violence both physical and emotional.

Eels' eighth leans on heavy blues. For instance, "Fresh Blood" cribs from Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You." But not exclusively: Seemingly sincere ballads ("All the Beautiful Things," "Ordinary Man") get juxtaposed with unhinged old-school rockers such as "Lilac Breeze," which borrows from Elvis Costello's "Mystery Dance." Lobo is typical eclectic Eels, and it's worthy of desire.

STEVE KLINGE, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER