Critical Writings

Articles and Reviews: MUSIC

Trees Outside The Academy by Thurston Moore (Ecstatic Peace)

Sonic Youth’s mainman’s second song-based solo album sounds exactly like what you might imagine Thurston Moore without Sonic Youth (even if Youther regular Steve Shelley does help out on drums) would sound like. That is, it’s an acoustic Sonic Youth album. It’s got the same laconic drawling vocal delivery, the same tetchy-snare drum rhythms, but all in the context of a strummed avant pop record, with laid-back, well-crafted songs. True, there is the occasional interruption by a shard of incongruous noise, but for the most part many of these songs sound like they could have been recorded on the back porch of a farmhouse. Final track, ‘Thurston @13’, a recently unearthed home recording of the pubescent Moore taping himself doing silly things ("What am I going to do next for your ears to taste?"), proves that even in his formative years, he was always a sound man.

First published in Magill magazine, February/March 2008