Set The Angels Free

Thurston Moore “Illuminine”

Thurston Moore’s third solo album Demolished Thoughts is a good, pretty record but it doesn’t move me. Though it is nice to hear him trying something new after a solid decade in which Sonic Youth has been in a stylistic holding pattern, I think the acoustic-guitar-and-string-ensemble approach here is better in theory than in practice. The problem isn’t in the execution — this is lovely stuff, especially “Illuminine,” and Beck did a fine job in producing this music — but in that Moore ends up sounding sorta drab in this musical setting. One of the things that makes Sonic Youth one of the very best rock bands of all time is that they have an incredible skill for creating sounds with guitars that are incredibly specific and evocative. I don’t hear guitars and drums in the best Sonic Youth songs; I hear images and places and melodies and rhythms abstracted beyond instrumentation. This music, though quite pleasant and aggressively tasteful, puts Moore’s distinct and familiar melodic tics and cadences into a context where the sounds don’t do much but signify the instruments being played. This might not concern me much if it were a different singer, but when I hear Thurston’s voice I expect a bit more poetry in the sound.

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