NYC Ghosts & Flowers is the 11th studio album by American noise rock/alternative rock band Sonic Youth. The album was very experimental and can be considered as a reaction to the theft of their instruments in July 1999, in which many irreplaceable guitars and effects pedals were stolen. This is also the first album since Bad Moon Rising in which Sonic Youth used John Cage-like prepared guitar, for example using a bicycle horn between the strings on Lightnin', a lime between the strings and the first pickup and a file inserted over the neck pickup on Small Flowers Crack Concrete and a drum stick between the strings in Free City Rhymes.