Thurston Moore
Now, I love Sonic Youth, but I’ve always been a Lee Ranaldo man. When I heard Thurston Moore was putting out a solo album of songwriter style material rather than the free/noise/jamz he does so often these days, I was a bit skeptical. 1995’s Psychic Hearts, his last solo songwriter album, kinda blew a little bit. Thurston is a good songwriter, but I wasn’t sure he would have enough material after last years Sonic Youth album.
But Trees Outside the Academy ended up being pretty damn great. Thurston’s songwriting on it is pretty consistently good. The man can fucking play that goddamn guitar and its nice to see him do some melodic stuff. Thurston mostly plays acoustic, but he’s got a good band backing him up. Steve Shelly plays drums. J. Mascis shows up to lay down some crazy electric guitar leads on stuff. And the very talented and often overlooked Samara Lubelski plays violin on a lot of tracks (Lubelski put out a great solo album this year that I need to post about).
Sonic Youth have referred to their past three albums as being their Classic Rock Phase, which is a very fitting description. If Sonic Nurse is Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Rather Ripped is After the Gold Rush, then Trees Outside the Academy is Thurston’s Harvest. And his Linda Rondstadt is Christina Carter of Charalambides (who also have a rad new album I need to post about). Christina does guest vocals on the outstanding folk number “Honest James”.
Thurston Moore - Honest James (with Christina Carter of Charalambides)
