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| | Arts Calendar / November 3 / Concerts |
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20:00 | Thurston Moore Band (USA) |
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 Although a key member of the critically acclaimed art/punk rock band Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore has also been involved in numerous side projects, including the Dim Stars with Richard Hell and Even Worse. His first solo album, Psychic Hearts (recorded during and immediately after his wife and Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon's pregnancy in 1994), with ex-Half Japanese guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, had an appropriately offhand feel but was far from sloppy. Along with carrying Sonic Youth into the 2000s, Moore collaborated with artists including DJ Spooky and Nels Cline, wrote music reviews and other pieces for Arthur magazine, and issued a book, Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, in 2005. His second song-based album, Trees Outside of the Academy, arrived in 2007, and featured largely acoustic arrangements and cameos by Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, Samara Lubelski, and Moore's fellow Sonic Youth member Steve Shelley. In 2010, Moore guested on the Hat City Intuitive's A Ticket for Decay and began laying the foundation for another solo effort, Demolished Thoughts, which appeared the following year. Following Moore's separation from lifelong bandmate, wife, and partner Kim Gordon in late 2011, Sonic Youth's future became incredibly uncertain and put on indefinite pause. Despite the unclear circumstances surrounding their split, Moore and Gordon worked in collaboration with Yoko Ono the following year on the album YOKOKIMTHURSTON. By 2012, Moore had begun touring and recording with new act Chelsea Light Moving, as well as joining black metal group Twilight on guitar. The year 2013 saw the release of @, a collaborative album of sax/guitar improvisations with fellow N.Y.C. fringe dweller John Zorn. 2014's The Best Day saw Moore shedding the softer, acoustic moods of Demolished Thoughts for a return to his signature rock sprawl and daydreamy lyrics. The album begins with bell-like guitar harmonics on "Speak to the Wild," but immediately launches into a lurching, creepy rhythm and building tension, recalling some of the more eerie moments of the Sonic Youth catalog circa Dirty or Murray Street. The lengthy, clattering "Forevermore" immediately follows the eight-plus-minute opening track, stretching The Best Day's first third over just two songs and setting up a rolling, mysterious backdrop of repetitive, lingering guitar wails for Moore's distant poetic lyrical wordplay. Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley plays on most of the record, adding a relentlessly simple but unignorable propulsive element to the tunes. There are dips into spellbinding acoustics on tunes like "Vocabularies" and "Tape," as well as driving punk on the sneery "Detonation." The Best Day comes nearly 20 years after Moore's official solo debut, Psychic Hearts, but the minimal, pushy rhythm and guitar interplay of "Germs Burn" and noisy clouds of feedback that break down "Grace Lake" could have fit nicely on that album. That's not to say he's simply been retreading ideas since the mid-'90s. The swaggering blues wobble of the title track and witchy acoustics that pop up throughout the album are all relatively new territory, but when Moore hits his stride with strange, dreamlike fits of guitar chaos, unconventional changes, and unflinching rhythms, all the elements of his very singular style come into full focus. While the newer additions to Thurston's muse are all well and good, The Best Day is most exciting when he returns to his most familiar trademarks, again investigating a sound that has spawned generations of imitators but still sounds like no one else. Don't miss the one concert of Thurston Moore Band in November! More info
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