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AllMusic
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Entertainment Weekly	C+
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NME	9/10
Pitchfork	7.1/10
Rolling Stone
Spin	7/10
The Village Voice	A+

A Thousand Leaves is the 10th studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth. It was released on May 12, 1998, by DGC Records. A Thousand Leaves was the band's first album recorded at their own studio in Lower Manhattan, which was built with the money they had made at the 1995 Lollapalooza music festival. Since the band had an unlimited amount of time to work in their studio, the album features numerous lengthy and improvisional tracks that were developed unevenly. Three highly experimental extended plays, Anagrama, Slaapkamers met slagroom, and Invito al ĉielo, were recorded simultaneously with the album.

A Thousand Leaves reached No. 85 on the US Billboard 200 chart and No. 38 on the UK Albums Chart. The song "Sunday" was released as a single and as a music video directed by Harmony Korine and starring American actor Macaulay Culkin. The album received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised the lengthy and quiet guitar interplay between band members Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. However, some critics criticized the forced vocal delivery of band member Kim Gordon and found several tracks to be unnecessarily long and poorly constructed.

A Thousand Leaves is the follow-up to Sonic Youth's 1995 album Washing Machine, which was released shortly after the band concluded their stint headlining the 1995 Lollapalooza music festival. With the money they had made at the festival, the band decided to build a recording studio, called Echo Canyon, on Murray Street in Lower Manhattan. The span of nearly three years between Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves also represented the longest gap between studio albums in Sonic Youth's career at the time. Singer and guitarist Thurston Moore explained that the band needed a break, noting that they had been touring non-stop for 16 years. He said, "We're having children, we're getting older, let's just cool out a little bit and build this workshop, and go that way, work that route." In their new studio, the band began writing new songs from extended improvisations in rehearsal. Several instrumental jams were released as extended plays through the band's own record label, Sonic Youth Recordings, and distributed by Smells Like Records, an independent record label previously formed by drummer Steve Shelley. These include Anagrama, Slaapkamers met slagroom and Invito al ĉielo.

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