Sonic Youth in: Sleepin’ Around!

Son­ic Youth w/ Be Your Own Pet @ Starlight Ball­room, 8 p.m. Tonight!

Son­ic Youth’s lat­est, Rather Ripped, does­n’t exact­ly rehash their last two albums, but it’s in the same vein: a mix of the pure­ly poet­ic and the pos­si­bly polit­i­cal. Case in point: “Do You Believe in Rap­ture?” reminds me of how lib­er­als find cre­ative ways to pick up horny con­ser­v­a­tives — just when you thought that scene was all sarged out.

What Rather Ripped does bet­ter than their last two albums is com­bine the grunge-inflec­tions that made them “famous” [see above] with the breezy and gor­geous melodies they redis­cov­ered on Mur­ray Street and Son­ic Nurse. Brood­ing and por­ten­tous, “Pink Steam” anchors the record with patient vio­lence. It’s a great sum­mer storm album, cloud­ed with ambiva­lence and sweaty with unre­quit­ed love.

[Else­where: Peanut But­ter Words vs. A Grand Illu­sion in: Mutu­al Admi­ra­tion Soci­ety!]