Thurston Moore's "Trees Outside The Academy"

The latest thing that's turned up from Ecstatic Peace is especially good. "Trees Outside The Academy" is a solo album from Thurston Moore himself, in some ways the first since "Psychic Hearts" in '95. Moore, of course, is always working on extra-curricular projects outside the confines of Sonic Youth, so various and often extreme that even groupies like me have trouble keeping up with them."Trees Outside The Academy", though, is what some might call a "proper" album, if a "proper" album necessarily contains neat little songs rather than sprawling, frictional skronk-outs. It's composed, rather than improvised, I think. And it's also extraordinarily pretty. Essentially, much here is a showcase for Thurston Moore's gifted songwriting. I guess a lot that has been written about Sonic Youth over the decades, even when they're at their most accessible, has focused on their tunings, the radical guitar techniques which they habitually use.On "Trees Outside The Academy", Moore mainly plays acoustic. Instead of Lee Ranaldo as a sparring partner, he's mainly matched up against Samara Lubelski, a very good violinist who's added texture to plenty of the East Coast avant-folk scenesters, notably The Bummer Road. Nevertheless, Moore's driving, slightly distracted style is immediately recognisable. It's interesting to discover that the genius is not in the treatment, but in the substance.I've written a lot more about this "here":http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/index.php?blog=6&p=294&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more294