Last time we encountered veteran noisenik Thurston Moore, he treated London’s magnificent Union Chapel to a hushed, blissful performance of his acoustic album ‘Demolished Thoughts’. Two years on, it looks as though the urge to construct walls of squalling, structured noise has taken hold once again – with Sonic Youth on indefinite hiatus, the iconic guitarist has returned with a debut album from a new band: Chelsea Light Moving. Loud, eponymous and relentlessly brilliant, it’s a welcome return for one of indie rock’s most enduring figures. So what better time to pose a few questions about poetry, heavy metal and starting afresh?
How does it feel to start out with a new band?
It doesn’t so much feel like anything new so much as how it smells. That smell of freshness, of baby powder sprinkled on a baby’s bottom. It can only become mannered and predictable and decoded with the relentless teaching of time and when that happens it will go away and I will start a new band called The Lonely Listener. I was thinking of actually starting a new band every year, or at the very least, a new band name.
What do your bandmates bring to Chelsea Light Moving?
Well Moloney is someone who can knock back a gallon of Guinness and five hits of mescaline and blast through a gig without anyone realising he’s titanically twisted (because he just is). Samara plays bass as if it’s an oversized violin turned sideways and she rocks it like a kosmische archer. Keith can play anything and everything and make it slay – he’s weaned on Minor Threat and Wizz Jones LPs. He should’ve got the Stones’ gig first time Woodsy dropped his pick.
Do you prefer to work with a female bassist?
If it was up to me it’d be a law – that ONLY females are allowed to play the bass in indie rock bands. Why? Because dudes think of the bass as a power thud and girls do not – they seemingly treat it as a cool beast to make the bad boys cry.
How did you choose the band name?
I just didn’t want to do gigs under my own name. Thurston Moore is not a good band name, I don’t think. Not as good as Dark Flight or Man Overbored. It’s a shoegaze title in reference to my desire to be a Londoner in my late 50s. But the gaze has lazer vision now and with it I plan to burn hot lines along Stoke Newington High Street from Jolly Butcher to Café Oto.
Did you consider that it might be less recognisable than your own?
No of course not. You think I know what I’m doing here? Moloney has to beg me to come to the rehearsal studio because I’m too busy looking for first edition Frank O’Hara poetry books but when I do comply it’s always a magic blast – all these songs were written in nine hours total.
How would you describe the record?
It reminds me of when I used to plug my brother’s Fender Strat into my family’s cheapo stereo system on top of our refrigerator in Bethel, Connecticut in 1973. I’d wire the guitar lead into the auxiliary input on the back of the console and the overdrive that would happen au naturel through the shit-shocked speakers was the defining sound of my artistic existence. So it’s nuthin’ new.
Is it a reaction to ‘Demolished Thoughts’?
Yeh. I’m ready to take my 12-string acoustic Martin and slowly grind it into the maw of a psychic wood-chipper.
Do CLM enjoy the same sort of musical telepathy as SY?
All groups NEED telepathy to even begin thinking about getting on stage. As Lydia Lunch has said, “Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD” – magic, sound & vision, are key – otherwise it’s just a disco.
Has your writing process changed?
I make all the ultimate calls in CLM – so that’s pretty cool in a megalomaniacal way – but that does get to be boorish after a while so I’m thinking of throwing it down for a bit to concentrate on opening a poetry salon in east London (true).
(Originally published by The Fly, 27/03/2013)