I like Sonic Youth, but I don’t have much love for Thurston Moore’s previous solo album, 1995’s ‘Psychic Hearts’. It consisted largely of sketchy quirk-rock noodlings that could have formed some of the more annoying tracks on a Sonic Youth record with a little more layering. It was far too eccentric and anti-melody for its own good and I rarely play it, except when there are loutish power-metal craving insurgents to be repelled from the fortress. The Sonics themselves have evolved over the years, though, and the last decade or so has seen the emergence of a happy, if sometimes predictable balance between arty guitar-noise and accessible, tuneful songwriting. This maturation has spilled over into Thurston Moore’s second solo effort, which is a surprisingly warm and inviting set of songs that bear the Sonic stamp, but are refracted through a different prism, as it were.

 
This album closes with ‘Thurston@13’, an early home recording that finds the teenaged Moore whiling away a few minutes recording the sounds of a Lysol spray can being operated, coins of different denominations being thrown on a table-top and more, in a parade of sounds ‘for your ears to taste’.  Creating flavours with sound has clearly been a lifelong obsession for Moore, although it’s a good thing that he picked up a guitar at some point over the years.

 
Joining Moore and his guitar on most of the key tracks on this album are Sonic drummer, Steve Shelley, violinist Samara Lubelski and Dinosaur, Jr. mainman J.Mascis. Moore elects to go acoustic for much of this album. The interplay between Moore’s supple, detailed acoustic work, Mascis’ distinctive leads and Lubelski’s versatile, song-based violin playing forms the core of most of the album’s stand out moments.

 
Several of these songs could have been rather good Sonic Youth songs, kitted out differently – which is already an improvement over ‘Psychic Hearts’. They play out differently though – ‘The Shape Is In A Trance’, ‘Frozen Gtr’ or ‘Never Day’ are all typical Moore songs at heart, with introspective, almost dainty melodies and soaring rhythms, but here they’re extrapolated through sequences of violin/guitar interplay, or shot through with Mascis noodles that create a more than cosmetic difference from the way Moore’s usual band would have done it. ‘Silver > Blue’ is the best exemplar of this sound. It’s a second cousin to ‘The Diamond Sea’, but deals instead in a folksy, loose feel that’s almost reminiscent of a Shakti jam in its sense of immense open space and delicate strength. ‘Honest James’ is built around jaunty, tuneful chord sequences that are miles away from the entropic soundscapes of a Sonic Youth blowout. ‘American Coffin’ opens with familiar squalls of noise and then turns into a jagged, minimalist piano jam. Elsewhere, Moore draws on his art/noise obsessions, with the punkish energy and feedback sequences on the whimsical ‘Wonderful Witches’, the noise incursions on ‘Off Work’ or the half-minute of ‘Free Noise Among Friends’, which ushers in ‘Trees Outside the Academy’, the other great highlight of this album. Acoustic guitars, violins and Mascis’ electric guitar all come together brilliantly on this track, and it’s clear that Moore hasn’t wasted his extra-curricular outing this time around.

Year of Release: 2007
Label: Ecstatic Peace