In 2006, the release of Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped brought a lot of the band's ex-fans-- people who'd either gotten over them with the help of 2000's NYC Ghosts & Flowers, or just thought they'd finally aged out-- back to the fold. The more tuneful record was different from anything they'd done this decade, re-establishing the direct line many of us had to the Sonic Youth of our teenage years. At the Pitchfork Music Festival this summer, Sonic Youth played a well-received Daydream Nation, but a bunch of people I talked to after their set thought the group sounded even better during the encore, when they tore through a handful of newer songs.
As a separate entity from Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore's reputation as a basement icon precedes him. Where it was once surprising to find him at Connecticut noise shows, Brooklyn No Fun fests, and Western Massachusetts DIY open mic nights, his recent role as mentor to (and collaborator with) young rock dynamos has since made his presence in the underground a constant. Given these feedback showdowns-- not to mention the solo work of his distant past-- it came as a mild shock when his Ecstatic Peace label recently announced that not only was there a new Thurston Moore solo album in the works (his first formal LP since 1995's Psychic Hearts), but that it would also feature actual songs.
Trees Outside the Academy is, in fact, a song-based album-- and they're good songs, too. Rather Ripped had whistle-clean guitar lines and minimal melodies-- the noise had lifted to reveal Sonic Youth still picking out sharp hooks, with songcraft as sparkling as ever. Those pop songs were a good place for them to return to for inspiration-- they gave the band a form (rather than void) to play around with-- and Trees takes up a similar challenge: What can a guy like Thurston Moore do with the bare, noiseless architecture of an acoustic guitar and verse-chorus-verse structures?
Try "Honest James", a chiming, slippery duet with Charalambides' Christina Carter that holds back on vocals until two minutes in, giving that delayed entrance an immediate kick. Or "Fri/End", an archetypal spoken-sung Moore track that begins with cranky feedback, then something more upbeat and jaunty before settling into a melancholy Sonic Youth groove. Add experimental folk artist Samara Lubelski's violin punctuation, which augments every song here, and Steve Shelley's solid drumming, and you begin to understand how much this guy can do with relatively little-- especially after growing accustomed to hearing him work for so long with so much more.
Those listening for Sonic Youth demos might be surprised to hear how much more there is to Moore's songwriting when it's comparatively unadorned. What would be burners in his band's hands are instead spare and introspective: "The Shape Is in a Trance" is weary; "Wonderful Witches + Language Meanies" begins emphatically and then strips down, a kind of reverse-momentum rock song. And then, just to prove he can do it, "Never Light" is a guileless twilight-type ballad about "beat-up copies of old satellites, messages beaming."
Spare hints of Moore's more revved up ways show up here and there on Trees, but with the same relaxed and dusty cast: "American Coffin"'s out-of-tune piano, "Free Noise Among Friends"' homemade analog noise, and "Thurston@13", a self-explanatory archival tape that begins like this: "What you are about to hear is me taking off the cap of a Lysol spray disinfectant can...[pop]...there. What you are about to hear is me spraying Lysol spraying disinfectant around...the room...I am in...[spray sound]... there."
It's no coincidence that Moore chooses to end Trees on this note. That his 13-year-old self was a huge theatrical weirdo won't surprise anyone, nor will the fact that the track ends with a young Thurston saying, "What you have heard is me wasting time again, asking myself deep inside, why the fuck I am doing this?" Of course, he's already answered this question, and he knows he has. What he's hinting at is a different question: How many different ways will he do it before he's done?
