Recording: Chelsea Light Moving

Artist: Chelsea Light Moving

Songs: The Ecstasy^* + Sunday Stage + Burroughs + Pretty Bad

Recorded at Lee's Palace, March 31, 2013.

Chelsea Light Moving - The Ecstasy

Chelsea Light Moving - Sunday Stage

Chelsea Light Moving - Burroughs

Chelsea Light Moving - Pretty Bad

Full review to follow. A pretty fabulous show from Thurston Moore's Chelsea Light Moving deserves to have some extra tracks posted, if only to outline how much the band are already moving beyond their self-titled album. What could have been a perfunctory run-through ended up being an eighty-minute show, with Moore even reaching back to Psychic Hearts in the encore.

^* We'll tentatively give this one the title of the John Donne poem that has been set to music. It appears this is a brand new track, or at least that's how it was described in Minnesota the other night.

Album: Sonic Youth / The Eternal

Artist: Sonic Youth

Album: The Eternal

This far along the road, listening to a contemporary Sonic Youth album is a bit like watching a contemporary Simpsons episode — usually enjoyable, but often with the slight aftertaste of a rehash of something you remember from ten or fifteen years ago. Relative to their whole output, this may just be "just another Sonic Youth album", but it's not without its charms. You can look for the minute variations: get Kim to sing the chorus on Lee's song — it's like pairing up Lisa and Superintendent Chalmers! Lacking a killer single, this is saved by its depth throughout — good listening start to finish, and an especially good one-two punch leading off. After that, you can mostly sit back and enjoy the textures. Thurston seems to be bringing the least winning tunes to the table, leaving Lee's stuff to shine a bit brighter, and Kim, as usual, has a pretty good one and a not-so-good one in there.

I'm not sure what this says about the band and its music, but there's something interesting to the fact that more space in the album's liner notes are given to art and photography credits than to the music and who made it. Meanwhile, I dunno what high-art concept about "The Eternal" the John Fahey painting reproduced on the cover is meant to convey, but it unfailingly makes me think, "Mmmm..... cherry danish".