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actually the only real good thing about it is mark prindle's review of it...
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This album is so Thurston POORE, it makes me want to take it out of the Thurston DRAWERE and throw it on the Thurston FLOORE. Then I might even grab the Thurston BORE and kick it out the Thurston DOORE and go down to the Thurston SHORE to pick up a Thurston WHORE. Let me tell you what you have in Thurston STORE if you decide that Dirty and Goodbye 20th Century CDs aren't sufficiently rotten to the Thurston CORE and you need some Thurston MORE to. oh. That was already - OK next slide.
Submitted for your approval: Sonic Youth features THREE different songwriters and STILL can't put out consistently good albums. So how do you think that ONE of those songwriters would fare when deciding to create a 15-song solo work? Well, Lee Ranaldo decided to create an album that's just a bunch of noises with locked grooves - "infinity" he calls it - HA! Can you imagine the art? Unfortunately it didn't translate very well to CD, what with "locked groove CDs" not...uh... existing. The first track sounds like --- HEY! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO MY REVIEW, YA DAMN "READER"???
As I set out to say, when Thurston Moore decided to create a solo work, he ripped off "He's So Fine," added a "bonus disk" of the worst jamming garbage you will ever hear, battled a burglar in his home and eventually sadly succumbed to the cancer that had - HEY!!!! GOD DAMN AMERICA FOR MAKING MY ATTENTION SPAN SO SHORT THAT I CAN'T EVEN COMPLETE THIS SIMPLE ARTICLE ABOUT THE YANKEES FOR MY SPORTS NEWS WEB SITE!
Thurston Moore's bad habits: (A) Performing songs whose vocal melodies are exactly the same as the guitar melodies. You've heard "Iron Man," right? Not the smartest-sounding song around, is it? (B) Just "saying" lyrics in an attempt to come across as "sassy" and "cool" - often double-tracked and/or through a distortion effect. Like an especially whiny version of Lou Reed. While we're on the subject, am I crazy or does Lou Reed seem to be especially fond of himself? (C) Using the exact same simplistic songwriting style in every single song (think of his tracks on Experimental, Jet Set, etc. - every song on here sounds just like those but worse -- unbelievably simple power chord sequences with slight finger ups-and-downsy changes repeated over and over and over again). And (D) Coming up with absolutely atrocious, ugly, amateurish, boring "hooks" with no positive qualities for miles around. Which is to say that if you like his Sonic Youth output, there's at least a CHANCE you'll like this too, though don't be surprised if you find your opinion of the man sinking pretty low after giving it a spin in the washing machine.
Woman: Did you say WASHING MACHINE????
Man: I sure did, SISTER!
Woman: Oh man, dat's COLD man - dat's EVOL!
Man: Sorry about that, baby! Look, to make it up to you, how about if I let you stroke my DIRTY MASTER-DIK til I shoot my GOO all over those NYC GHOSTS AND FLOWERS?
Woman: I'm confused.
Man: Of course you are baby, because CONFUSION IS SYR 3 FEATURING JIM O'ROURKE.
Woman: Don't GO there! You ain't getting' none of MY stuff unless you pay me A THOUSAND. (LEAVES).
Man: Hey! Come back! This is BAD because the MOON is out and my penis is RISING!
(Curtain)
There are four pretty great songs on here (the intriguing feedback-drenched "Ono Soul," an interesting little arpeggiated minor chord piece of melody called - ironically enough - "Pretty Bad," a sassy generic Sonic Youth style rocker called "See-Through Play/Mate" that has a really awesome double-guitared third chord in the riff, and this really fast "Hang Out" song whose ugly chords actually come to really grow on a guy if he's forced to listen to them over and over inside an echo chamber full of bugs. All crawling in and out of his eyes until he GOES INSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNEEEEEEEE!!!!!!)
The rest of the album sucks a dick though, and I betcha any other member of Sonic Youth, past or present, would say the same thing. I hope that SOMEHOW this review is only taken as a bitch piece about this particular CD though, because I made some personal attacks on Thurston in my Sonic Youth reviews (which are several years old, btw) and that is NOT AT ALL my intent here. He's just a guy who creates the kind of music that he likes. And a ton of other people like it too. I just PERSONALLY feel that his weak rockers need the counterpoint of Lee Ranaldo's screwball art-minded brain to keep them interesting and varied. Otherwise they sound underwritten, amateurish and extremely samey. And I think the same of Lee's ambient mood pieces - without the rock structure of the rest of the band, that guy's output is a total bore too. So please - I like Thurston now, and greatly respect how he has kept his band together for over two decades, for the most part giving us lots of really good songs to enjoy. But I can't help it - this CD really really does honestly suck a lot of balls out of my mouth.
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