Thurston Moore Group – Whelans – Live Review – 24/07/23
by Killian Laher

An old-school lengthy queue greeted the first visit of Thurston Moore and his band to Dublin in a decade.  First up were ‘avant-garde’ duo Nick Roth and Panos Ghikas, who played two baffling pieces, Roth playing the saxophone without blowing into it, while Ghikas was hitting his violin while still in its case.  In truth, it was stuff to try your patience to say the very least and did little to warm up the audience.

Thurston Moore and co came on stage later than expected due to a two-hour Aer Lingus flight delay.  Moore was joined by Alex Ward on guitar and occasional bassoon, Jem Doulton on drums, Jon Heidecker on keyboards and My Bloody Valentine legend Debbie Googe centre stage on bass.  The band were in good form as they played a jammy set of ‘Thurston-rock’, much like Moore’s songs with Sonic Youth, with a little Television added, and much jammier.  It was along the lines of his 2020 album By The Fire, from which much of the set was drawn.  Songs like Hashish and Hypnogram had an excited audience nodding along happily before Siren, the first of several lengthy workouts.  This one features lots of trebly guitar noodling, building up to a long passage of feedback, and it’s a good ten minutes or so before Moore sings the verse.

The metal-tinged riffs of Cantaloupe went down well, even with an elongated ending, as did the self-indulgent art rock of Aphrodite.  Despite occasional moments of tedium, the mood in the audience was celebratory, chanting “happy birthday to Thurston” on the eve of his 65th birthday.  After a cover of the Velvet Underground’s Temptation Inside Your Heart which could be best described as ‘groovy’ the set finished with what Moore introduced as ‘The Tories Are Going Down’.  This track in reality was an extended version of Locomotives, equal parts thrilling and endurance testing.

An encore of Speak To The Wild overcame Alex Ward’s broken guitar string to show off the band’s admiral dynamics on probably the most melodic song of the night.  Though not a radical departure from Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore’s music does at least expand on his former band’s music to create engaging if at times bewildering music.