Spirit Counsel

Chronogram Q&A with Thurston Moore Spirit Counsel is described as representing, among other things, “a period of reflection on spiritual matters.” One might say your music has always had a spiritual element running through it, at times perhaps more pronounced than at other times. Was focusing on that spiritual aspect a conscious intention when you were writing the music for this album, or was it something you’d realized you’d done after the music was written and recorded? How did it evolve and what pulled you in that direction? Writing and playing music has always been, for me personally, an engagement with spiritual life. So you are correct in the saying this is not such a new statement to make. But what distinguishes Spirit Counsel, as a collection of recent writing, is that I approached the presentation as a wordless sonic message of pure tonal/noise expression. The current "leaderships" have taken WORDS and put them to the nefarious activity of despair, divisiveness and degradation. I stripped out words and made the instruments the total sound. Picking up guitars and drums is not something I foresee these politicians having any wherewithall to co-opt. You gravitated toward New York in 1976 because of the early punk scene there and were especially attracted to no wave, the noisier, more avant-garde, and less obviously “rock ’n’ roll” tangent of the scene that Sonic Youth eventually sprang from. What was it about the no wave bands that you found so compelling and inspiring? I suppose I was always attracted to the subversive and the outlier. Seeing images of Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart, Iggy, cross-gender signifying Wayne County and David Bowie resonated a thrill of "otherness" in me. I would see pictures many times before i would hear the actual music. I could only imagine what these artists would sound like and I would seek out the records, an adventurous exposition in the early 1970s. Luckily these records were discounted as they were very unpopular (mostly by the labels who deigned to release them, it seems). I would find surprises like Can's Ege Bamyasi LP or the first Stooges LP in the "cut-out" bins for forty-nine cents! And they were like strange friends that were far more interesting then the kids in school. I loved them and when realizing there were others with this smae experience collecting around places like CBGB I ran there. Of course we all loved Patti, Blondie, Hell et al but when Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Arto Lindsay, Rudolph Grey and the other No Wave musicians, who existed concurrently with the 1976 class of ground zero punk rock, began performing with their bands where any traditional concept of virtuosity was replaced with completely original vision and heart I was struck, though not initially, by it's elemental brilliance. When Sonic Youth came together this was where each of our sensibilities were in tangent with. It’s been pointed out repeatedly how the music Sonic Youth made collectively and via its individual members has altered the course of contemporary music. Do you hear or detect the influence of your art in that of others? Do any especially humbling, flattering, or surprising examples of your music having resonated with other artists come to mind? At some point in the late 1980s and certainly into the 1990s I would hear, or it would be brought to my attention, the playing of bands utilizing inspirations of Sonic Youth. Yes, flattering but always it was via a prism of transferring our approach, where alternate tunings and non-traditional chordings are primary, through more standardized technique. Sometimes I'd be alerted that Radiohead woud have a "Sonic Youth " part in a song, but it was always reigned in with "proper" finesse. I prefer bands who don't necesarilly play by the rules. At all. There came a point where, in criticism, bands would have "Sonic Youth" parts which invariably meant noise and distortion, which I felt to be a simplifying of our output, but I understood. Given Spirit Counsel’s themes of reflection, what do you most hope will be the hallmarks of your legacy as an artist and what do you most hope people in the future get from hearing your music when they discover it? I don't consider legacy so much these days as it only reflects ego and self-importance and, like money, it is essentially worthless. I want to think of the future where we can continue to fight and resist the negative energies that seek power and mechanisms of control over organic life. I want to further explore and exhibit expressions of wonder, joy and collective consciousness where we care for every living thing. This is the only way to make music, as far as i can see.

Even with its imposing length and deep roster of collaborators, the ecstatic new album from Thurston Moore is arguably the most accessible entry point into his boundless experimental canon.

In many ways, Thurston Moore's songs for Sonic Youth were defined by the struggle between his experimental impulses and more traditional rock structures.