Thurston Moore: We Sing a New Language

by Nick Soulsby

As one of Sonic Youth’s founding members, Thurston Moore has been acknowledged as a crucial forefather of the alternative rock scene of the past thirty years. In addition to his songs with Sonic Youth, Moore has also created a substantial catalog of over 130 recordings spanning three decades. Thurston Moore is the first-ever survey of his entire body of work, which, until now, has been sorely neglected due the sheer scale, depth, and diversity of his recordings. Compiled with input by Moore himself, Thurston Moore combines detailed information on his music with oral history testimonies of his collaborators on each recording to provide brand-new insight into this crucial artist’s lifelong dedication to musical performance and exploration. 

Genres: Music

336 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2017

Reviews

[Julián Orduña Guerrero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Candid and thoroughly interesting oral history of Thurston Moore's comprehensive discography of experimental music, noise, and rock'n'roll outside of Sonic Youth. From The Coachmen all the way to "Rock N Roll Consciousness" (still unreleased by the time the book was published), it also allows to take a good look at the adventures, intentions and ideology of other creative sources associated at some point with Thurston's explorations and development of his musical craft: Labels such as Threelobed Recordings; Feeding Tube, Joyful Noise Records, Northern Spy, Manhand, Fast Speaking Music, Carbon Records, Blank Editions, Fag Tapes; and awesome characters like Michael Gira, Lee Ranaldo, Mats Gustafsson, Richard Kern, My Cat is an Alien, Dave Markey, Chris Corsano, Leslie Keffer, Bill Nace, Yoko Ono, Phil Blankenship, Dylan Nyoukis, Anne Waldman, Glenn Branca, Lin Culbertson, Andy Moor, and Lasse Marhaug (to name but a few).

[John Litvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A detailed telling of Thurston Moore's many projects without his band (Sonic Youth). I would rather have read a bio of him or the band than this book. There were many photos of TM and lots of details on how he works, but I didn't enjoy it too much.

[Silvia Dominguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sonic Youth began experimenting with music before everybody else. They were there long before "alternative rock". The book is not exactly a biography of Thurston Moore. It's a detailed recount of stories by musicians and artists that have worked with Thurston and the band.
It's full of anecdotes from the rock scene in New York in the 80s and 90s. The fun part to me was to read about the evolution of the music industry from tape trading and boom boxes, to nowadays Spotify and PayPal.
If you're a fan or enthusiastic musician, you might enjoy the details and you might enjoy the book more than me. Even though it was interesting to read about the band beginning, improvisated gigs, and stories from famous people, I would recommend the book only if you are a Sonic Youth fan.

[Steven Pilling · Rating 2 out of 5]

well it is very thurston Moore. it feels very arch very self satisfied and very marginal.
it has some merits but as I'm only a fair weather fan it was unenjoyable