Album of the Week: Thurston Moore – Flow Critical Lucidity
Flow Critical Lucidity is 9th solo studio album by American guitarist, singer and songwriter Thurston Moore. Moore is of course a founder member of hugely influential group Sonic Youth with whom he recorded 15 albums across three decades from 1981 to 2011, and during that time and beyond he has released countless collaborative albums. Ironic then, on the surface at least, that the now 66 year old’s new album opens with a track called New In Town. Rather than an attempt at reintroducing himself or garnering a new audience, New In Town is a testament to the power of and currency of a long lasting interest of Moore’s, that of youth. Lyrically he shouts out punk heroes Minor Threat, Fugazi, Bad Brains and Red C and celebrates the potency of punk’s ‘shock of the new’, and the primitive yet revolutionary power of the 80s hardcore scene. Musically New In Town is interestingly at odds with its subject matter. Rather than venomous, supersonic blasts of distortion the track instead opts for a meditative approach featuring the familiar chiming metallics of Moore’s guitar with the pitter-patter of subtle percussion.
Sans Limites follows to gradually reveal an album that becomes increasingly more sensitive and romantic, even spiritual at times, than we have heard from Moore in a long time. Sans Limites’ lengthy introduction of interweaving guitars and keys create watery, fluid patterns – an ambience suggestive of flashes of dappled sunlight breaking through gently swaying trees. When Moore’s voice does eventually enter we are greeted by vocals more mature than we are perhaps used to. After all, on Sonic Youth records and indeed many subsequent albums Moore’s voice seemed to be preternaturally free of aging. In contrast to the celebration of youth evident in the opening track Sans Limites appears to welcome the new and endearing textural and emotive positives of a senior voice. Moore is joined on vocals by Laetitia Sadier, once of Stereolab, which only goes to bolster the onward motion of the track’s Krautrock evocation.
One of the album’s strengths is that it reminds us of not only Moore’s prowess both an improvisor who is a master of textural guitar motifs as well also as a revered songwriter with a gift for memorable melodicism. Hypnogram is perhaps the album’s best evidence of this dichotomy. A reflective, unfurling sweetly-sung ballad that morphs into a supreme instrumental build of nebulous psychedelia – one that recalls Sonic Youth’s latter career high points of A Thousand Leaves, Murray St and Sonic Nurse. The brooding We Get High switches things up with a welcome, transportive foray into goth-rock. Moore’s voice drops to a lower register as he somewhat resembles his 80s no wave contemporary Michael Gira (Swans) as he intones with an incantatory, shaman-like quality across the grinding churn of funereal drums, glistening keys, and circular, looping guitars. One is also a little bit reminded of the sublime desperation of The Eternal, the penultimate track on Joy Division’s Closer (1980).
The excellent closing track here, The Diver, again recalls some of Moore’s late-period Sonic Youth work. The Diver is, at 8 minutes, the longest track on the album and allows Moore and the band the space to drift, wander and present a patient but mesmeric piece of music. Dream-like, ethereal and bewitching, the song delivers a poetic recounting of the tragic story of a real diver lost to Lake Geneva in 2022. A cousin of sorts to Moore’s 1995 Sonic Youth epic The Diamond Sea but whereas that epic erupted, The Diver is content to succumb to the power of nature, to be carried and for all to be eventually submerged, engulfed by the psychic unconscious.
Thurston Moore – Flow Critical Lucidity is OUT NOW on ‘Resistance’ Green Vinyl + 7” Flexi Disc, Standard Black Vinyl + 7” Flexi Disc and CD.
