Oh, to be an ageing rockstar. After thirty-odd years of playing instruments, making a racket, gathering a cult following, and occasionally influencing and changing the course of indie rock forever, it must still be a pretty sweet gig. Sonic Youth in particular have held onto most of their credibility despite their incredible longevity, perhaps helped by the fact that even this far into their career, they're still turning out decent albums like 2002's "Murray Street" and 2006's "Rather Ripped".

This credibility has allowed the band to nurture a "release everything" ethos, helped by the fact that Sonic Youth clearly have enough money to fund their own record label and their own studio. The result has been a series of 'SYR' EPs, each of which has featured the band completely eschewing any semblance of making music for the masses, and instead indulging their experimental side. The results have been mixed to say the least, with a few absolute gems littered amongst various instrumental jams that sound more like a band tuning up than a band actually trying to make music.

"SYR 7", also released in some places as "J'Accuse, Ted Hughes", alas, does not have any of those gems. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's a completely unnecessary release with very few redeeming features at all. The music here isn't even all that new, the first track on here, titled J'Accuse, Ted Hughes was first played during the tour for "NYC Ghosts and Flowers", but never actually made the album. Perhaps the band should really have considered whether it was a good idea to release a song that was left off of an album that even the band's apologists labelled as "crap". The track itself is as poor as anything the band have ever released, being a completely aimless mishmash of guitar feedback and echo, with a very stoned sounding Kim Gordon adlibbing puerile "lyrics" over the middle of it, bringing the level of the music from "rubbish" to "almost unlistenable". Experimentation is one thing, but even experimental music needs to have some actual point to make, rather than just wallowing in self-indulgent confusion like this song does.

Agnes B Musique as a song is slightly better, in that it's hard to really pick out anything that's particularly bad about it. Recorded a few years ago as a soundtrack for a fashion designer, it's much more minimal and less intrusive, and passes in a pleasant enough eighteen minutes. Whether it was actually worth releasing is another matter, because again, there doesn't seem to be much of a point or a direction to this music. I guess if you like paying good money to listen to ambient elevator music, you might get a kick out of it.

In theory, the "release everything" philosophy is a good idea, but records like "SYR 7" prove that it has a downside; lame leftovers that should never have made it out of the studio seeing the light of day. I'm sure that it won't damage the band's legacy too seriously, and I'm also sure that die-hard Sonic Youth fans are reading this review right now and rolling their eyes, sure that I "don't get it". That may be true, but then I guess I'm not the one that just paid good money for this background noise.