Sonic Youth fans in Boston had to wait a while for the band's 'Eternal' tour to reach them. The veteran noise rock band played most of the US, as well as many other continents this year, before hitting the Hub. "It's nice to be back in eastern Massachusetts," guitarist Thurston Moore said during the first of a two-night stand at Boston's Wilbur Theatre on Sunday.

Like the set the band played, Moore and wife/bandmate Kim Gordon were in familiar territory -- they live in western Massachusetts -- but it wasn't home. The performance, though tight and often gloriously beautiful, veered sharply into punk garage territory. Sonic jams were succinct and often a filigreed adjunct, softening songs propelled by ferocious rhythms and mostly culled from Sonic Youth's summer stunner, 'The Eternal.'

Kittenish Gordon, ever the rock coquette even in her mid-50s, wore a cocktail dress that perched above the knee, framing well-toned muscles. Her breathy purr underpinned 'Sacred Trickster' with a seductive note, but her sharp snarl through 'Anti-Orgasm,' a spiky duet with Moore, was pure contention. Bassist Mark Ibold might be closing out the decade with his most high profile year since the mid-'90s -- as if replacing recent stand-in Jim O'Rourke in Sonic Youth wasn't enough, his old band Pavement announced its return to the stage. Still, Ibold's investment was 100 percent, providing a mighty concentrated rumble that tied into drummer Steve Shelley's pounding and guitarist Lee Ranaldo's lovely melodic soloing.

Despite the fan-thrill of classics such as 'Shadow of a Doubt,' 'The Sprawl,' 'Cross the Breeze,' and the brilliant finale, 'Death Valley '69,' the set's standout was 'Antenna,' the beautiful muted epic from 'The Eternal' sung by Moore and topped with jarring riffs and atonal guitar noise. Even there, though, the noise jam was brief and the last of the sonic beat poets moved swiftly on.