The members of Sonic Youth have always worked like poets, senses flared to the emotional current of their New York City, and faith in this process has now led them to one of their most human albums and possibly their best. “Murray Street,” their 16th full-length album in 21 years, is a mature statement that satisfies as completely as their last three messy experiments ‘Washing Machine,” “Experimental Jet Set” and “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” did not.

Singer and guitarist Thurston Moore opens the lead track, “The Empty Page,” with startling confidence: Here is a myth-making combination of signature sound and accessible melodies brought into fine focus. Evoking the Byrds, the Velvets, even Quicksilver Messenger Service, the still-experimental but unforced songs contain not a wasted note, even when, as on “Rain on Tin,” or “Karen Revisited,” songs slide into trademark shards of guitar decay and shriek-back.

Given that Murray Street, the location of Sonic Youth’s recording studio, is only two blocks from ground zero, and that the Sept. 11 attacks came in the middle of writing the album, it’s easy to attribute the emotional focus to disaster. But it probably has more to do with the stabilizing kinetics of avant-rock guitarist and post-classical composer Jim O’Rourke, who now joins Moore, guitarist Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon and drummer Steve Shelley as the band’s fifth member.

Where the old Sonic Youth shows through in pure noise lust, as on “Sympathy for the Strawberry,” there is a new heartbeat holding it all together, a sort of Eno touch, a grounding promise of resolution. It’s a return to the form that made “Daydream Nation” a landmark of the post-punk era, but with a new respect for the fragility of not only a music scene that has fallen into confusion, but, of New York itself.