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Thurston Moore - Demolished Thoughts | Album review
These organic numbers are structurally no different than Sonic Youth tracks, merely replacing Moore's buzzing amplifiers with his acoustic, a violin and a harp.
Thurston Moore
In the Alexander McQueen exhibit currently running at the Met in New York, there’s a dress handcrafted from thousands of golden beads and horsehair. Sarah Jessica Parker describes it as “ugly beautiful.” But why? It’s stunning. It’s beautiful-beautiful, or, well, natural-beautiful.
But it’s easy to understand the sentiment. Dresses made from mud and hides are unconventional and not something the general population would just throw on. Sonic Youth is beautiful in the same way. Its songs have a flowy, on-the-fly architecture and use grungy elements like feedback and distortion the way McQueen might use mud or clamshells. Though labeled a noise band, the veteran act has made some of the most unexpectedly gorgeous rock music.
On his third major solo release, SY frontman Thurston Moore is weaving with lace and silk. These organic numbers are structurally no different from his band tracks, merely replacing buzzing amplifiers with his acoustic, a violin and a harp. The trio of instruments snakes and intertwines under Moore’s gentle voice, which is the lone remnant of the street cool one might expect from the singer of Sonic Youth, offering Beat-poet bits like the “clear blood and freezing sun” in “Blood Never Lies” and a needle that “hits black lacquer” in “Circulation.”
Otherwise, it’s a surprisingly bucolic album. Beck, in the producer’s chair, lets fresh air course through the tracks and billow the white-cotton-sheet-like strings. Overwhelmingly lush, the three-ingredient feast begs for a little percussion, a pinch of dirt—something low and ugly.
