Thurston Moore – Flow Critical Lucidity – Album Review
by Killian Laher

This is, I believe, Thurston Moore’s ninth solo album, and seventh since the demise of Sonic Youth.  As with everything with Moore these days, there’s a degree of ‘art’ to this project, which features regular collaborators Debbie Googe and James Sedwards.  It opens with New In Town, a piece of musical musing by Moore and Co. that’s a strange opening to an album, in that it’s kind of low on charm.  However, Sans Limites is one of several tracks which act as a vehicle to feature Moore’s trebly, Verlaine-channelling guitar playing.  Very much in the mode of his contributions to latter-day Sonic Youth, Moore waits until three minutes have elapsed before opening his mouth to sing, and is briefly joined by Laetitia Sadlier of Stereolab before the end.  The lyrics are vaguely poetic nonsense but the musicianship is very enjoyable, and the track feels like it ends prematurely.

Moore growls moodily “I thought I saw your shadow in the hallway” on Shadow, which leads into one of several guitar workouts midway through.  Hypnogram is probably the most accessible track here, it’s seven and a half minutes of Thurston-rock, with Moore singing over melodic, trebly guitar.  It’s the kind of thing he does very well, and he’s ably backed by a restrained performance by the band, and with several twists and turns across the song, it doesn’t feel like seven and a half minutes.  The somewhat plodding We Get High features distant noise and twinkling bells in equal measure.  It feels like they decided ‘Let’s do something different’ and it’s either avant-garde or a bit of a mess, depending on your perspective.  Rewilding doesn’t go anywhere in particular, and the album finishes with the long drawn-out The Diver, which features more fine guitar work from Moore.  This one doesn’t really go anywhere either, but in this case, that’s absolutely fine!

An uneven album then, one that’s unlikely to pull in new listeners but won’t overly disappoint Sonic Youth fans.

Sans Limites