BY EVAN HAGA / PHOTOS BY MARTIN LOCRAFT

"We've got a lot of new songs to play for you tonight," said guitarist and singer Lee Ranaldo, a few numbers into a 90-minute D.C. show consisting mostly of material from Sonic Youth's excellent new album, The Eternal. His tone was neither commandeering nor apologetic, but rather a simple statement of procedure. After almost three decades as lodestars to the rock avant-garde, Sonic Youth do what they want. (Then again, they always have.)

Alternative rock is a middle-aged person's game now more than ever, and the band's fiftysomething members could be considered models for graceful aging and sustained relevance. Ranaldo and guitarist-singer Thurston Moore, dressed quaintly in button-downs, have retained their mop-tops, and singer-guitarist Kim Gordon, in a shabby-chic sundress, evoked the sort of New York-centric, well-kept handsomeness that women far outside of rock and roll aspire to. As individuals they've remained culturally important with extracurricular interests-free-jazz experiments, solo albums, record labels, clothing lines; as a band, by smartly and steadily releasing records like The Eternal. The album, the group's 16^th, marks some firsts: Their debut for indie label Matador after leaving major-label Geffen, and the recorded introduction of Pavement bassist Mark Ibold.

But The Eternal is also a stylistic cross-section of Sonic Youth's oeuvre-songs of pop and rock architecture subverted by an obsession with all things amplified, with twitches and dissonances learned from no wave. Since the band is known to tour its latest albums-or, in the case of the Daydream Nation shows of recent years, its best ones-this night at 9:30, the second of two sold-out shows, acted as a kind of compilation. (You can check out the full audio via NPR.)

The new songs were played close to the chest but all the signatures were there: the contrast of taut punk rhythm-guitar and wide-open, Stooges-style riffing in "Sacred Trickster"; the Warhol-ian celebrity send-up of "Malibu Gas Sation" (a surf-tinged consideration of Britney Spears); the astral art-pop of "Antenna"; and "Anti-Orgasm," a psychosexual romp in which Moore and Gordon offered some of the most delightfully askew vocal interaction this side of John Doe and Exene Cervenka. It all boasted an impressive balance of freshness and familiarity, not to mention accessibility.

But it's impossible for a band with so much history to evade nostalgia completely, and the crowd couldn't help itself when the band played a classic. Songs like "White Kross" and "Death Valley '69" served witness to the overhauled guitar heroics Ranaldo and Moore perfected long ago: Heroics that replace blues-rock grandstanding with savvy interplay, pummeling distortion and an insatiable sense of discovery, but heroics nonetheless. For all the experimentalism, this is still a stunningly effective rock and roll band.