The first words you're likely to hear in relation to Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts are "acoustic" and "folk." Indeed, the Beck Hansen-helmed album was made mostly with six- and 12-string acoustic guitars, harps, violins, bass (sometimes upright), and drums. But to call this record "folk" or "acoustic" is to mistakenly suggest that it's relaxed comfort music from an aging dude who still sings about teenage riots with his hoary rock band. Rather, Demolished Thoughts is as immediate and form-warping as Moore's work with Sonic Youth, comprising nine anxious, charged songs about fleeting time and failing happiness, played with veteran resilience. Jokes about old men and their Martins need not apply.
The essentials of this project might recall Trees Outside the Academy, Moore's song-oriented solo album from 2007. (The "song-oriented" distinction is necessary if reductive, as Moore seems to release between one and, oh, 47 experimental discs every year.) Violinist Samara Lubelski is the only Trees alumna on Demolished Thoughts. Moore returns with a consistent, cohesive band-- Lubelski, harpist Mary Lattimore, guitarist Bill Nace, Hansen and his regular collaborators, drummer Joey Waronker and bassist Bram Inscore. As such, this is a much more rigorous and singular album, constructed with a definite, deliberate sonic approach that his previous solo work has foregone. Trees had its moments, but, as a whole, it was uneasy and unsettled, as though Moore finally made it into a studio to record ideas he'd tucked away in notebooks during Sonic Youth tours. Demolished Thoughts feels less like a side-project of afterthoughts, more like a careful album cut with a smartly assembled band.
Instruments aside, Demolished Thoughts isn't built like typical folk music, or even the chiseled chamber folk of the last decade or so. The hazy, nearly seven-minute "Orchard Street", for instance, gets through its lyrics in nearly half its running time; the second, instrumental half sounds like an acoustic reinvention of the glorious codas from Sonic Youth's Murray Street, the role of the pounding drums taken by battered guitar strings, the squall of the electric guitars replicated with harp runs and violin trills. The album's other longer stretch, the appropriately titled "Space", moves in perfectly expanding and contracting waves. Moore enters with the tone of someone who's given up on patience: "I used to have all the time in the world/ Cruising galaxies in search of gold," he sings, the unease in his voice dismissing any back-porch associations. Even at their prettiest, like the slow-rolling and sad-eyed "Benediction" or the gently exhaling closer, "January", these songs move in unexpected ways, whether it's the players pushing into unlikely patterns or the production embellishing some unseen aspect. As with his other band, Moore succeeds by folding great ideas into otherwise good songs.
Beck's production is actually as essential and interesting as these tunes. He stretches Moore's songs without polishing them, giving them a pop number's scope and ambition without seeming obvious or pedantic. "Circulation" is a nervous collage of busy images-- needles hitting records, friends on the move, speakers, lights, cries, shots. Hansen pushes the core pieces of the song close together, so that Inscore's bass lashes violently against Moore's layers of heavy-handed strums. And on "In Silver Rain With a Paper Key", Hansen adds a trail of echo to Moore's plaintive tone, allowing the words to float like dust among guitars and string parts. Not lo-fi per se but purposefully damaged, the recording mimics Moore's loneliness and disorientation if only by way of atmosphere.
Moore, who will turn 53 this summer, is several years older than many of the bandleaders to emerge as indie rock luminaries with his success and staying power-- J Mascis, Henry Rollins, Frank Black, for obvious examples. That's reason enough to be sidetracked by the talk of mellow folk vibes. While Moore's been putting out records for three decades now, Demolished Thoughts feels vital and purposed, more like a debut than an encore. It's the work of a restless artist fighting successfully through his own skin to not only outstrip our expectations of how he sounds but also of the sort of music acoustic guitars and harps can make. With Demolished Thoughts, Thurston Moore solo albums have become more than fields of noise throwaways spiked with the occasional gem, more than Sonic Youth stopgaps. A lot of people retire after 30 years, but Moore has added another great line to an overwhelming résumé.
