Thurston Moore “Demolished Thoughts”
They were the “It Couple.” And not just downtown New York’s It Couple — though they were absolutely that. But also Indie Rock’s It Couple. And then Alt Rock’s It Couple. They were Interview Magazine pin-ups. Paper Magazine darlings. Icy cool and white hot. One foot in the avant garde, the other on the very edge of the mainstream. He was so tall and gangly — all limbs and mop. He was full of ideas, but also he was not the serious one. She, on the other hand, was sharp angles and stare downs, focused and transcendent in ways that her partner was not. Yes, they were the It Couple, but he was never the “It Guy.” Kim had “It.” Thurston had many things. But most of all, he had Kim. He was not Ken. She was not Barbie. But, well, you get the point.
In case you didn’t know, Sonic Youth was really important. For their ideas and their image and for their drone and noise in between those ideas and that image. For the fact that they were New York’s greatest Rock band for more than a decade. For how they assimilated No Wave into something that became an actual wave. For how they resisted and also how they co-opted. In fact, more than any American Indie band of the Eighties, it is Sonic Youth who cast the brightest light and deepest shadow. Yes — Kim, Thurston, Lee and Steve made titanic, life-changing albums together. And yet, as much as for their art, Sonic Youth was important because of Thurston and Kim — how they looked, how they acted and, most of all, what they signified about marriage and partnership.
For twenty-five plus years, Sonic Youth represented the dreamy — almost unimaginable — intersection of creativity and monogamy. They were obviously anti-establishment, even when they became the establishment. And they were groundbreakers in spite of their traditionalism — four pieces, two guitarists, one bassist, one drummer. But for every person who’d actually listened to “Daydream Nation” or “Sister,” there were dozens more who knew about Kim and Thurston. And every one of those people knew intuitively — and with certainty — that they were a marital ideal.
And also, it wasn’t just them. It was Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan. Yo La Tengo was the over the river, slightly suburban, fully Jersey id to Sonic Youth’s ego. Georgia and Ira were more interested in comfort than fashion. More concerned with privacy than image. More enamored of melody and harmony than noise (though they certainly loved to make noise as well). But, along with Kim and Thurston, Georgia and Ira suggested the opposite of what Stevie and Lindsey and Kurt and Courtney told us. They were the promise of abiding love within marriage — and of egalitarian partnership in marriage. Thurston and Kim were harder. Georgia and Ira were softer. But they were two sides of a coin. They were all the evidence we needed. It’s possible that we even conflated the two couples at times, but it’s certain that we projected ourselves onto them and their marriages onto our own. If they could have it all, couldn’t we?
Beyond the music and art they spawned, though, Kim and Thurston might ultimately be remembered for their dramatic split more than their creative union. If you search the internet for both of their names, together, the results are almost entirely about their divorce. In 2012, when news of their split surfaced, it shattered. Then it cut. And, even today — more than a decade later — the bruise is still visible. Kim and Thurston? No! No! That was not how it was supposed to work. It didn’t make sense. It was destabilizing. Until, as facts emerged, it made perfect sense.
The narrative that played out was as tawdry as it was ancient. Thurston had fallen in love with another woman. It was something of a workplace romance — she was the editor of art books, which he occasionally published. To complicate matters, she was both married and pregnant at the time of the announcement. In time, Thurston revealed that the couple had in fact been in love for quite a while, and that marriage is hard work and that, oftentimes, even hard work is not enough. Intellectually, we all understood this. But inevtiably, we all still blamed him.
The aftermath of Thurston’s affair was swift, but not without aftershocks. The couple divorced, Sonic Youth broke up and fans were left wondering if it was really the end, if the band might reunite or, even, if Thurston might one day come to his senses about what he’d done and who he’d betrayed. But not me — I never wondered. I was never interested in any of those things. I remained grateful for Kim and Thurston. Thrilled for the music they made together and for the image they projected — real or mythical, enduring or ephemeral. I wasn’t particularly curious about the details or the backstory or the motives. It wasn’t my business but, also, who the fuck really knows what goes on in marriages behind closed doors.
Even years later, it was not the split that intrigued me but rather was idea of “the secret” — and the weight of secrecy. And specifically the notion that Thurston was (presumably) holding a secret for some time — that he was writing, recording and making music while holding this secret. Secrets are rarely, truly silent. They make their way to the surface, through clues or admissions or tics. There are of course famous “divorce albums” (Marvin’s “Here, My Dear” and Bruce’s “Tunnel of Love”) and nearly as famous “break up albums” (Beck’s “Sea Change” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”). But I also wondered what happens right before those records, before the end and the aftermath, when the secret is still just that. Can you hear that secret? Can you feel the fault lines? Is there a stray thread which would soon be pulled and pulled until it was all undone?
“Demolished Thoughts,” recorded in 2010 and released in the summer of 2011, is Thurston’s “secret album.” “Secret” as in containing personal confidences rather than being a product hidden away from the market. It was likely recorded and certainly released during Moore’s affair. In 2014, Thurston told Pitchfork that he’d been in his new relationship for “about six years,” meaning that it started in either 2008 or 2009. As to when the affair was known to Kim, I obviously have absolutely no idea. But every version of math indicates that “Demolished Thoughts” was made when Moore’s affair was an active secret — either to the public or to his ex-wife or, presumably, both. And that is interesting to me — a record which was released while the world presumed the artist was one half of an unbreakable “It Couple,” wherein the subtext is the text itself but wherein that subtext was, at the time, unknown to listeners.
On its surface, and if you squint your ears, Moore’s third solo album presents like his first two, and not so far from later Sonic Youth albums. Guitars up front, oddly tuned. Vocals slightly back, charmingly flat and slightly askew. More structure than chaos. Less noise than you’d expect. It’s not one of his experimental improvisation projects nor is it one of his avant-garde collaborations. And as with many of his previous releases, the critical response ranged from very positive to mildly ecstatic.
But unlike its predecessors, “Demolished Thoughts” is (for the most part) an unplugged album, featuring acoustic guitars, violin, and harp, with synth and production courtesy of Beck. In 2011, writers likened it to “Sea Change,” but that comparison always felt more convenient than accurate. Upon repeat listens, “Demolished Thoughts” sounds like “Sonic Youth Unplugged.” It’s to “Rather Ripped” what “MTV Unplugged in New York” is to “In Utero.” And perhaps even more so than that, it sounds like “An Evening with Thurston Moore at Fifty-Two.” Like it should be performed at Lincoln Center for a sit down audience. Like the announcement of a new season of life. That season would be most certainly be Autumn — a season of change.
Though Thurston’s guitar work is exquisite, and though Beck is at the board, and though Beck’s buddy Joey Waronker is on the drums, it is Samara Lubelski’s violin that operates as “Demolished Thoughts’” lead instrument. It provides a frame for Moore’s repetition and it coats the songs with orchestral sorrow. However, for whatever benefits it provides to the existential gestalt of the record, it also comes at a cost. Whereas Moore normally excels at cool and chaotic, the violin keeps things cold and measured. It evokes drama but without sufficient tension. It’s a polite, frequently beautiful, accompanist for Moore’s acoustic guitar. But it lacks the force of Lee Ranaldo’s guitar. And while I know that is exactly the point, it does not mean I have to agree with the point.
The album’s other, more glaring absence is, of course, Kim Gordon. To be clear, it was not as though Thurston hadn’t made records without Kim before — he’d made many. But, “Demolished Thoughts” feels deeply and obviously like a stripping away. It’s unpluged-ness is the unplugging from one relationship for another. Its nakedness is both the shame of its secret and the desire to reveal something intimate and true. In other words, to whatever extent it is about a secret, it is more so about the person outside of the secret.
Back in 2011, it would have been impossible to hear any of this. All I could hear then was acoustic guitar, violin and a whiff of Beck — a patently lovely record from an esteemed Indie guitar hero. But a dozen years later, I cannot un-hear the secret. And I do not think that I am projecting, either. “Demolished Thoughts” is positively obsessed with light and darkness, with blood and purity. It is wistful, dreamy, joyful and — yes — guilty. In 2011, the mention of “love” and “lover” conjured something (and someone) assumed. Knowing what we know now, however, the lyrics are neither presupposed nor symbolic. These are not abstract poems or anniversary notes. They are specific and personal, poetry from a man to a lover who is not technically his love.
Though Moore can make exquisite music with an acoustic guitar, he lacks the melodic gifts (or interests) of — say — Nick Drake or Elliott Smith. As a result, “Demolished Thoughts” can sometimes get mired between traditionalism and experimentalism. “Illuminine,” for instance, resembles the late Sixties English Folk vibe that Stephen Malkmus tapped into on “Traditional Techniques.” But, unlike Malkmus, Moore is practically allergic to the familiar. And so, instead of pain and relief or sky and earth, we get quiet exploration without destination. More than sounding lost, however, Moore mostly sounds sad. “Demolished Thoughts” is deeply romantic, but the romance is betrayed by malaise — by a bandleader whose body is resolved but whose mind might not be.
There are also, of course, spectacular moments. “Circulation” is as close as we actually get to “Sonic Youth Unplugged” — tense, droning, threatening. There’s drama in the words and in the guitars and, maybe most of all, in Beck’s synthesizer, which provides thunder and lightning to the affair. It’s a song that succeeds in much the same way that “classic” Sonic Youth albums work, just without the electric guitars. And then there is “Space,” the eighth song on the album, the second longest song on the album, and also the moment when the violins and harps and poetic symbols are set aside for revelation. The guitar is out front, exploring, but with the destination fully known. Thurston feels his way through the feelings, working up to his big admission:
I used to have all the time in the world
Cruising galaxies in search of gold
Another planet with no one home
It was only a matter of time
Before the space police discovered my crime
Forbidden visions etched in stone
Makes no difference to my death wish ray
Hearts get broken every day
Your undying lover is here and gone
It doesn’t take an English major to locate the confession inside the science fiction. The guilt and carnage is all right there, in the tension of the guitar strings and the flatness of the vocal. It’s a make believe story about a real life transgression. It’s the moment that reminds us of our recency bias — of how our initial reading was a false reading. Of how, in 2011, “Demolished Thoughts” was a well regarded album from a well regarded artist — a daring musical turn, full of poetry and symbolism. Barely a decade later, however, it survives as something else — as a suite of hushed secrets that could not, would not be contained, about the end of the “It.”