Staff Reviews

Thurston Moore - Rock N Roll Consciousness

Review by Aidan Reynolds

If this were a Sonic Youth record, it’d be a raging mess, but here everything works in unison»

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Thurston Moore entered The Church studios in London to record new songs with producer Paul Epworth. Thurston, the founder of seminal US alternative rock experimentalists Sonic Youth and Paul, the celebrated producer and co-writer of Adele, The Pop Group, Florence and the Machine et al created a dynamic vibratory match). Thurston Moore Group had been touring since the critically acclaimed release The Best Day (2014, Matador) that introduced the core members James Sedwards (guitar), My Bloody Valentine's Deb Googe (bass) and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley (drums). Rock n Roll Consciousness is Thurston's focus on this group's strength, beauty and promise, with an unleashing of James Sedwards' brilliant guitar play, Deb Googe's minimalist groove ethic and Steve Shelley's in-the-pocket swing dynamism. The songs Thurston introduce are expansive, anthemic and exploratory with lyrics, co-written with poet Radio Radieux, investigating and heralding the love between angels, goddess mysticism and a belief in healing through new birth. They range from the opener Exalted, an unfolding and emotional journey in homage to sacred energy and exaltation, to Cusp a springtime charging, propulsive piece with a feeling of Sonic Youth mixing in with My Bloody Valentine to Turn On a pop-sonic poem to holy love both intimate and kosmiche to the contemplative mystery of life-defining time travel in Smoke of Dreams. The record concludes with Aphrodite, a strange and heavy no wave rocker in salutation to the idol of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Rock n Roll Consciousness is a new and exhilarating chapter for Thurston Moore, and promises to be a creative highpoint for anyone interested in his legacy of avant-garde music and writing, as strong a statement as anything he has recorded these last three decades - serious and precocious and strangely accessible.
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