Sonic Youth announce Live in Brooklyn 2011, documenting their final New York live performance

Sonic Youth have announced a live album documenting their final live performance in New York. On August 18, they’ll release Live in Brooklyn 2011 via Silver Current/Goofin’. Today, they’ve shared the first couple of songs from the set, “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley ’69,” along with an intro. Find pre-order info here.

Steve Shelley said about the live performance in a statement: “This show was a culmination of a run of really special outdoor summertime shows in New York City for us, starting in ’92 with Summerstage in Central Park when we played with Sun Ra. For the Williamsburg Waterfront show I wrote out the set list to present to the band and it was a lot of material we hadn’t played in a while, a lot of deep cuts, so I wasn’t sure if everybody would feel like doing it. After worrying about which songs the band might say yes or no to, I threw those concerns out the window and I just made a list of songs that I thought would be a great set. We practiced the week of the show at our space in Hoboken and put the set together. First we’d try and make sure we had a guitar in the song’s tuning, then we’d try to remember the arrangement and try and put it together, sometimes re-learning bar by bar. In the end I think the whole song list made it through. Even as early as ’86 and ’87 we stopped playing ‘Death Valley 69’ and ‘Brave Men Run’ with any regularity. We’d just get excited about new material coming into the set and songs would get ‘retired’ and wouldn’t get played again for years. So on this particular night in Brooklyn a lot of those retired songs and deep cuts got dusted off and played for this show. It turned out to be a pretty special event with a really special song list.”

Last year Sonic Youth released the archival album, In/Out/In. Their legendary 1988 album Daydream Nation is part of our Treble 100 series.

Sonic Youth Live in Brooklyn 2011 tracklist:

1. Brave Men Run (In My Family)
2. Death Valley ’69
3. Kotton Krown
4. Kill Yr Idols
5. Eric’s Trip
6. Sacred Trickster
7. Calming The Snake
8. Starfield Road
9. I Love Her All The Time
10. Ghost Bitch
11. Tom Violence
12. What We Know
13. Drunken Butterfly
14. Flower
15. Sugar Kane
16. Psychic Hearts
17. Inhuman