First let's get the inevitable cheap shot out of the way: by album number 19, Sonic Youth can officially jettison any associations with youth – they're downright mature, if not bedridden, at this point. But judging from Sonic Nurse, their prognosis is good: there's still a heartbeat here, and S.Y. classicists' patience (or patients) will be rewarded. Even the name of the band's latest – along with the ominous, streaky, naughty-nurse Richard Prince paintings – hints at the virtues of caretaking for Sonic Oldsters, as well as the perverse, pop/pulp-romance pleasures of masked women in uniform. What's next – the sensual Sonic Rest Home?

Yet there's no rest in sight for the band, who lay down the law for detractors from the start, courtesy of noise grande dame Kim Gordon and the opening "Pattern Recognition." "I'm a cool hunter, making you find the way / Like a brand name you'll replay ... Can you sell me yesterday's girl? / Because every day I feel more like her," she purrs, cruising the marketplace aisles for choice pop trash. Recognizing their own musical conventions – the back-and-forth guitar interplay; the ping-pong between notched-in groove and buzzing clouds of noise; the distinctive circling bridges; and the prettiest, most ethereal uses of distortion in rock – the band cast their lot with pop formalism, along with many others in the new rock revolution, though who under the age of 30 would think to associate their music with both Fleetwood Mac's Bare Trees and Black Flag's Jealous Again? Only folks old and sentimental enough to recognize the barren folk-blues-pop beauty of the woods and coulds – and angry and damaged enough to end most of their new songs with scorched-earth climaxes. Flipping from the clunky and tender troglodyte's love song of "Unmade Bed" and the womanly distress signals of "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" to the suspenseful, medicine-chest games of "Dude Ranch Nurse" and the blissful peace-out of "Peace Attack," it's clear this is a kinder, more mysterious, and maybe even sexier Sonic Youth. (Kimberly Chun)

Pan Sonic
Kesto (234:48:4) (Blast First/Mute)

Whether it's the phoenix-from-the-ashes spirit or the relatively cheap rent, the über-hoppin' Berlin has just about every artist in the world flocking to it, drastically changing the way the world makes music. After years of weathering the Finnish tundra, Pan Sonic, the duo of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen, also left their Turku home to set up camp in the city. And while the bleak soundscrapes that defined Pan Sonic's past few records aren't entirely forgotten on their latest, Kesto (234:48:4) – the numbers refer to the four-disc set's sprawling length – you can blame the pair's new Perlon and Kompakt neighbors for convincing them to include bristly electro and other mutated forms of dance music.

Of course, Pan Sonic have steadfastly been electronic music's most fearless boundary testers. Besides originally calling the group Panasonic (which didn't jibe with the electronics company's legal department), they've literally phoned in concerts with remote controls, performed an entire world tour without a guaranteed fee, and backed up the dirt-dealin' Peaches at last year's Sónar festival in Barcelona. This ambitious four-pack, however, might be their most daring move yet.

Pan Sonic's last far-flung tour, a loss leader that resulted in little more than increased name recognition and diminished health, set them up with some incredible field recording sources for Kesto. But rather than take a predictable route through sample recontextualization, Vainio and Väisänen plumbed the depths of their tapes and reset their brand of electronic formalism as if skittery dance-floor rhythms occurred organically rather than by synthesized calculation. They're, naturally, engineers of atmosphere and couldn't care less if we can't pick out individual sounds in some trite train-spotting game.

Releasing anything more than a double disc, however, graduates musicians to new levels of statement-making art, based solely on the size and volume of their canvas (think Oldenburg or Yamasaki). Sure, Kesto – Finnish for "strength" or "duration" – is no 69 Love Songs (the Magnetic Fields' exquisitely crafted three-record musical), but it's also no 69 Love Songs (the easy-to-digest collection of affectionate pop tunes.) Each disc on its own is a neatly wrapped parcel of nihilism, as testing ("Ilmenemismuoto/Appearanceform") as it is tantalizing ("Konnat/Toads") and transformative (the frizzed-out Juan Atkins-styled "Painovoima/Gravity"). But if you've got four-odd hours to spare, the complete end-to-end listen is an absolutely remarkable one, right down to its last four gratingly intense milliseconds. (Ken Taylor)

Ozomatli
Street Signs (Concord)

Ozomatli are up to their ears in hooks, grooves, tunes, street smarts, and street fights. With all that, you'd think they'd have a hit single or two. Of course they're a terrific live band – they routinely pack small halls with delirious fans who can't get enough of the over-the-top, hip-hop- and Latin-heavy world beat – and they often jam for hours at a time. The band love to blast their hard-driving, groove-happy message to the world – but still, hits mean exposure, exposure means money, and lack of money means a band who've got to tour to survive.

So what's the problem? How come a band this good, playing a mix of music that is nothing less than the sound of America's future, isn't on top of the heap? Because, well, this is America, where the powers that be serve up the same old shit no matter what people want. Street Signs – Ozo's third album – is their best to date, showcasing an experienced, airtight unit who, after seven or eight years on the job, are all grown up.

Things get rolling with "Believe," a driving funk groove with an Arabic vocal line doing a call-and-response with a string section called the Forte Music City of Prague Orchestra that leads right into "Love and Hope" – which I assume can be found on the dance floor, because that's where you're going to be for a while. The title cut – hip-hop over salsa beats – is not "Latin-flavored," as it's been described; it's Latin. "(Who Discovered) America" makes me choke, but Charlie 2Na - an Ozo OG - drops by to rescue things with "Who's to Blame." And when legendary pianist Eddie Palmieri steps up on "Dona Isabelle" and "Nadie te tira," the sound is not "Latin-jazz flavored"; that music is Latin jazz, and it fits right into the mix.

Is Street Signs going to put Ozomatli over the top? Well, probably not, because the hit parade is a stinking pile of confusion presided over by the music industry and Clear Channel. Still, if there were any justice in the world – the band are all about justice – Ozo would be all over the airwaves, the war would be over, and Bush would be in prison. Not bad. (J.H. Tompkins)