This year started with Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore opening a record shop in his adopted home of Stoke Newington, while simultaneously recording his seventh solo album, ‘By The Fire’. Inspired by the idea that music is a healing force, Moore’s current band – My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe (bass), Negativland’s Jon Leidecker (synths), James Sedwards (guitar) and fellow SY ex-pat Steve Shelley (drums) – are here attempting to quell your restless soul through nine incendiary rock cuts.
The glistening opening moments of ‘Breath’ recall ‘The Diamond Sea’ from Sonic Youth’s ‘Washing Machine’, its overlapping countermelodies and unpredictable twists instantly reminiscent of Moore’s interplay with Lee Ranaldo. Elsewhere, Leidecker’s electronic additions infiltrate the epic, restless ‘Locomotives’ and the white-hot ‘They Believe In Love’.
Some 40 years on from when Moore first appeared as such a towering figure in New York’s no wave movement, his music has rarely sounded so vital.
