With two exceptions — neither of which has yet featured on these pages — the Sonic Youth albums of the last two decades kind of blur together for me. That means I'd forgotten NYC Ghosts and Flowers even existed, let alone that I owned a copy.
Seeing that I got it on release in 2000, I can reconstruct that (a) I bought it on the strength of the previous album (one of the two exceptions), which I loved and (b) that I'd forgotten about it suggests that I quickly wrote it off as below par. When was it that they had all their instruments stolen, and had to start over again without all the modifications and tweaks they'd made to create their trademark sound? Yep, it was directly before this album.
However, a first listen suggests that writing off may have been a bit precipitate. Quite interesting in parts.
Second listen: a bit of a curate's egg, as John Peel once said of the Ciccone Youth Peel session. It lacks the vibe and the effortless momentum of A Thousand Leaves, but I think it has a bit of something that isn't there on, say, Washing Machine or Murray Street.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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