Sonic Youth, “In/Out/In.”

My parents divorced when I was 7. The separation not only meant spending every other weekend with my dad and his new girlfriend; the fracturing of my family made me skeptical that any love could survive the perils of modern life. For a time in my teens and 20s, my belief in the power of love was rekindled by Sonic Youth. It wasn’t just the legendary New York City noise rock band’s special brand of alt-tuned weirdness that stoked the flame, but the storybook romance of bassist Kim Gordon and guitarist Thurston Moore. I thought if a couple could maintain a stable romance in the topsy turvy world of rock and roll, perhaps there was hope for me after all.

So you can imagine how I felt in 2011 when the couple announced they were splitting up. It wasn’t just that one of my favorite bands was kaput, but that a guiding star in my life had been extinguished. If there’s a lesson to the 21st century, it’s that optimism can be tough to come by. In/Out/In, the first of a series of deep dive releases from Sonic Youth’s cavernous vaults, feels a bit like an album of photos taken during the family vacation before Dad ran off with his secretary.

The music on In/Out/In is instantly recognizable as Sonic Youth, even as most of it is instrumental, and some of it is pretty far out. “Basement Contender,” a nearly 10-minute jam, opens the album and features the syrupy guitar pairing of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore. The intricate, layered guitar calls to mind albums from Daydream Nation to A Thousand Leaves. This improvisational jam recorded at Moore and Gordon’s house in North Hampton features slightly little more conventional, rhythm/lead guitar roles than the band’s more egalitarian compositions.

On “In & Out,” Gordon’s vaguely Middle Eastern “ooh’s” drone over Steve Shelley’s pulsing percussion. The jam, recorded during a soundcheck and added to later, feels a little more atmospheric and less directed. The groove is equal parts Krautrock and Ambien, er, ambient. “Machine” is three and half minutes of churning guitars that sway over a heavy rock drumbeat.

The album also collects “Social Static,” the band’s fairly industrial soundtrack to a film of the same name by Chris Habib and Spencer Tunick. Bereft of any recognizable rock and roll instrumentation, the nearly 12-minute song sounds a bit like a fireworks explosion inside a factory that makes pots, pans and steel wool. On “Out & In” (which is a separate song from “In & Out”), the band is joined by two Billy Preston additions: Pavement bassist Mark Ibold and the band’s Brian Eno, producer-guitarist Jim O’Rourke. All told, there may be as many as four guitars adding to the wall of sound on the album’s closer, with O’Rourke, Moore, Ranaldo and Gordon all contributing to the sonic squall.

It doesn’t look like Sonic Youth will be reuniting anytime soon. And my dad died a few years ago. So sometimes the past just has to be the past. But it sure would be nice to find a trove of family pictures from happier times, and that’s kind of what In/Out/In is.

Follow writer David Gill at Twitter.com/songotaku.