Definitely the most potent of the post-Dirty Sonic Youth records.

Great record! Not perfect. But that's the crux of this band. Self conscious lyrics. Ever evolving intellectual progressions. It's heady and precisely plotted. Nice pressing, sound is very good. Sonic Youth can draw some major Velevet Underground comparisons off of this one and in the best way possible.

I really have a soft spot for this album. It surely isn't the harsh groundbreaking noise of yore, nor the hardcore-tinged tight precision (or near-precision) of the early 90s. "A Thousand Leaves" rather deals in a form of sonic beat poetry (no surprise a song is dedicated to Allen Ginsberg), long soundscapes and freely evolving structures, that might be called "jazz" if not played on electric guitars. As lyrics go, roles were by 1998 clearly defined, Kim bringing in the feminism and the politics, Lee the darker streak of experiments, while Thurston lights up the best songs (IMHO) with his words of ever-lasting teenage vitality. This is no noise-pop-by-numbers though, just a well-crafted body of work by a band confident in their individual and mutual qualities. Hope I'll feel this way when I'm forty!