Early in Sonic Youth’s set, Kim Gordon, dressed in bronze lamé that looked like it had been dragged through a dirty New York alley, pushed her bass guitar around on the ground and then stood in front of a pile of black amps on stage. She appeared to be listening to them, those black boxes that regulate the noise, for the kind of mystic instructions that would make the writers of “Lost” proud.

For romantics of the rock 'n' roll squall, the Hollywood Bowl served up an evening of pummel and grace Thursday night. Each performance – No Age’s smart brutality, Sonic Youth’s artful bashing, Pavement’s elegant shambles – danced around noise. For No Age, who opened the show, that mission was explicit; for Pavement, the recently reunited headliner, less so. Sonic Youth, helmed by Gordon and Thurston Moore, the art-world godparents of feedback-laden wreckage, made a fine connective tissue.

No Age, the local duo of Randy Randall and Dean Spunt (and joined on stage by William Kai Stangeland-Menchaca on samples), wins distinction for perhaps being the loudest band to ever perform at the Bowl. At times, it was thrilling: For their closing number, drummer/vocalist Spunt did little more than issue a series of club-fisted lashes while the shell around the Bowl’s stage pulsed with light. At other times, some of No Age’s nuances were lost in the rubble. Spunt’s vocals, in particular, couldn’t find much expression or dynamic interplay.

Sonic Youth, on the other hand, has been at the post-punk game much longer and is more adept at countering the harder elements with guttural beauty. The lineage between No Age and Sonic Youth is clear, if only in stage presence; anyone could believe Randall is Moore, just some 25 years younger: same style of slouchy flannel, same curtain of hair that only sometimes parted for an expression of stupefied wonder on Randall or a Cheshire Cat’s grin on Moore.

When well-known indies Sub Pop, Merge and Touch & Go threw anniversary parties, the labels did so in their hometowns. New York's famed Matador Records, however, is going the twentysomething bachelor party route, celebrating is 21st anniversary with a three-day weekend in October in Las Vegas. The already-reunited Pavement will be joined by the soon-to-be-reunited Guided by Voices, leading a lineup of more than 20 artists on Oct. 1-3.

Masters of the low-fi guitar rock, Guided by Voices split, more or less, in 2004, and Matador promises that the Vegas anniversary gigs will feature the band's "classic" 1993-96 lineup, which likely means the band that included guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell. The event is set for the Palms Casino & Resort, and ticket prices and a full lineup will be revealed on July 5.

After missing in action since 1999, alt-rock slacker heroes Pavement have become regulars around the Southwest, having already appeared at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and a festival warm-up date, and are currently booked for a Sept. 30 gig at the Hollywood Bowl. 

Other artists on the Matador bill include Spoon, who signed with the label outside the U.S., Belle & Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the New Pornographers, Superchunk, Girls, Cold Cave and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, among others. 

The label promises more acts to be announced. Matador's anniversary party is being thrown in conjunction with Los Angeles promoters' FYF Fest.

-- Todd Martens

---

Clicking on Green Links will take you to a third-party e-commerce site. These sites are not operated by the Los Angeles Times. The Times Editorial staff is not involved in any way with Green Links or with these third-party sites.

---

In a way, the worst thing that could have been happened to a shaggy dog crew like Pavement was to be crowned as legends. The forever unfazed five-piece have been kicking around the bloated corpse of rock star idolism since their 1992 debut, the exquisite riot of “Slanted & Enchanted.”

On 1997’s “Brighten the Corners,” when Stephen Malkmus sang “the leaders are dead” in “Starlings in the Slipstream,” it was a cry of panic and glee – and certainly not a bid to become one of the new ones. Unless leadership could be assumed with equal parts irreverence and elegy for what had passed.

But at their pre-Coachella date and first North American reunion show, Pavement, birthed in unremarkable Stockton, California, delivered a powerful romp worthy of lore. It was the kind of show that a fan expected from the band in the late ‘90s but the band, publicly splintering by the minute, couldn’t quite manage.

With tensile focus over a two-hour set of 31 songs, Pavement visited every cluttered nook of their collection, turning loose a spinning jenny of chiming guitars, elegant riffs, spaceball synth effects and tossed-off lyricism.

For the first few songs, Pavement, with little more stage decor than a few strands of light overhead, seemed slightly tentative. The crowd, outfitted in enough flannels and slouchy jeans to trick a time traveler into thinking it was 1997 at the snazzy Pomona Fox Theater, matched their mood with hesitant swaying.

But once they hooked their claws into the trip-start rhythms of “Rattled By the Rush,” the show blew open. Spread across the stage, with Malkmus on one side and steadfast guitarist Scott Kannberg on the other, the band moved closer together. As they launched into the thick of the set, they rode a low-end rumble from drummer Steve West and bassist and Sonic Youth member Mark Ibold that sometimes teased at the edges of destruction.