Sonic Youth rarities compilation In/Out/In coming in March, hear In & Out now

Sonic Youth
(Image credit: Eugene Gologursky/WireImage)

Sonic Youth will release a five-track rarities album, In/Out/In on March 11 via Three Lobed Recordings, and have made the previously unreleased In & Out available as a preview of what’s to come.

The five songs featured on the now-defunct New York alt. rock trailblazers’ compilation were committed to tape at various locations between 2000 and 2010. Basement Contender and Machine were recorded in the band’s rehearsal space in Northampton, Massachusetts, during sessions for their fifteenth and final studio album The Eternal, which emerged in June 2009. In & Out was recorded in Pomona, California and Echo Canyon, New Jersey, and Out & In was recorded in Echo Canyon with producer Jim O’Rourke, who performed with the band from 1999 to 2005 and also plays on the album’s penultimate track Social Static

Vocalist/guitarist Thurston Moore is to have his autobiography, Sonic Life, published by Faber & Faber next year.

A synopsis of the book reads: “From his infatuation and engagement with the 1970s punk and ‘no wave’ scenes in New York City, to the 1981 formation of his legendary rock group, to 30 years of relentless recording, touring, and musical experimentation, birthing the Nirvana-era of alternative rock, and beyond, it is all told via the personal prism of the author’s intensive archives and research.”

Faber published Girl in A Band, the acclaimed memoir by vocalist/bassist Kim Gordon, co-founder of Sonic Youth, in 2015.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, guitarist Lee Ranaldo says that the quartet have been approached numerous times in the past decade with ‘blank cheque offers’ to reunite after disbanding in 2011, but have never seriously entertained the idea.

“We’re all living and breathing, so you never know what the future will bring,” he says. “But we have not entertained it at this point. It’s something that hangs out there and people are always asking about.”

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.