the album actually charted on Billboard's Heatseeker chart at #6, worth noting i suppose cause i didn't expect to even chart at all

Possibly because of the little article written by T that is in the booklet, about Suicide and (another band, don't recall!)...
He drops the f-bomb a few times...
Oh wait, I think he says fuck in one song, and in the booklet, it's fucking blurred out. What the hell is that?!
That is the effects of signing yr labelto Universal.
Call me big-punk, but retarded censorship like THAT is soooooooooooooo fucking stupid.

David Keenan says:


"New solo album from Thurston is his best non-group effort to date, with some lucid songwriting illuminated by a killer group that features Christina Carter (Charalambides), Steve Shelley, Gown, J.Mascis, John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) and Leslie Keffer. The duets with Christina are particularly unearthly while the inclusion of some early homemade sound poetry, old letters to Creem and classy pics of Thurston as a kid chilling to Metal Machine Music and Horses are just so much gravy. It still kinda bums me out that alla the square mainstream reviews are championing this album for its "lack of skronk" - I mean, if you're not into skronk, why the fuck do you listen to rock music in the first place? - but regardless of the kind of flags that dopes might wanna plant in its ass, this is a great record that has been getting a ton of spins at VT HQ of late."

http://www.kevchino.com/fullpagerevi...e-academy/1376

8/10

The twenty-something year old back catalog of Sonic Youth records can be daunting and polarizing. The shady, NYC-dwelling paramours of punk invention create a lot of records in a relatively short period of time, and they do so stubbornly and absolutely without an eye for passive listener consumption. Apt adjectives of anything SY could easily be “challenging” or “obscure” but what is often lost in the mix is the sheer will to be “rewarding” on their own terms.

Extrapolating that out to its smaller component parts, Thurston Moore has been at the center of that “make storm” from the beginning. While his tall, lanky, every-day-dad-in-the-hardware-store look is as iconic as Prince’s eerily shaved body to the denizens of rock’s thriving underground, he is among the most inventive pioneers to strap on a fender. On Trees Outside the Academy, Moore summons a dark, multi-layered sound hinging largely on his acoustic guitar. Moore backs himself up with an array of artists, Samara Lubelski on violin (brilliantly on the albums first track, “Frozen Guitar”) and J. Mascis’ (an outcropping of the Rather Ripped session) scattergun electric guitar, just to name a few. The album stretches out, from the hearty folk stylings (“Honest James”) to the wholly melodic (“Fri/End”) to (“Wonderful Witches + Language Meanies”) something that feels like a refugee track from his main project.

Moore has invented an album that feels like twelve variations on a theme, a project based on friendly collaboration. It’s hard to arrogantly place intent on Thurston Moore, someone who has been so genuinely driven, an up and down contributor to the punk movement since most of his fans were in diapers. Clearly though, this album has heart, characteristically disjointed, strange and unfettered, but its more evidence that light shines in the dark, explosive world that is Sonic Youth. Sometimes its paladins come give us a tour of that world on their own.
Erick Mertz

Not that I'm aware of. I have some reasonably old ones that don't seem at all problematic in that regard.

The BRAG's Album Of The Week: Thurston Moore




Thurston
Trees Outside the Academy
Four Stars
4 stars
From the first twenty seconds of album opener ‘Frozen Gtr’, you brace yourself for the ensuing wall-of-feedback associated with noise-godfather Thurston Moore. The siren wails from the distorted guitar. It echoes like a whale song. But away it falls to reveal a haunting violin and acoustic guitar, bowed and strummed, not with aggression but with an air of romanticism. This opening track foreshadows the tone of the solo project Thurston, and his album Trees Outside The Academy.
Thurston brings together Steve Shelley, violinist Samara Lubelski, J Mascis et al to collaborate on his album. Together they contribute to a number of charming songs, leaving behind the effects pedals and focus on delivering each song with vulnerability, leaving it at times almost bare.
‘Honest James’ is one such example. At first impressions it seems an acoustic instrumental, until it unfolds as a beautiful duet with Christina Carter. Other highlights include ‘Fri/End’, the more physical title instrumental ‘Trees Outside The Academy’ and the fast/slow ‘Wonderful Witches + Language Meanies’.
Last year’s Rather Ripped showed long time fans that Sonic Youth have grown from the avant-noise cocoon they had been stuck in for awhile. Thurston has spent all this time out in front, but still hiding behind his fringe and noise. This album gives the listener a stripped back and, albeit brief, personal look into the other side of Thurston Moore.
If I were to have a son one day, he would be called Thurston.
CMog
http://www.thebragmag.com/reviews/th...he-week-th.php

I am going to buy it!!!!!!