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Trees Outside the Academy

by

Thurston Moore

 
Trees Outside the Academy
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Avg: 4.0 (272 ratings)

Sonic Youth frontman turns down and gets beautiful.

  • We Say...

    Review by Keith Cameron

    If the 12-year gap between Thurston Moore’s first solo album and this new one suggests a life of fruitful harmony aboard the Sonic Youth mothership, then so too does the aural weft of Trees Outside the Academy. It’s surely testimony to Moore’s relaxed sense of his artistic self that he should have elected to make what is primarily an album of acoustic ballads, albeit serrated just under the surface by his trademark gonzoid dissonance. And what beautiful songs these are, none more so than "Honest James," where Charalambides’ Christina Carter duets with the author on a supplicatory lament to love and loss, with Moore’s lyrics pitched at a level of emotional candour from which his work with Sonic Youth has generally shied.

    While many solo efforts clearly suffer from self-indulgent motivation, the predominant sense here is of a writer investigating alternative contexts: the violin-flecked rustic Kraut grooves of "The Shape Is in a Trance" and "Off Work," for instance, are obviously of the same hand that created "Pink Steam" from the most recent SY album, but you can’t imagine Moore’s band going about them in such pleasingly understated fashion, simply because that’s not their modus operandi. Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis pops up to gnarl tuffly on "Wonderful Witches" and SY drummer Steve Shelley offers unobtrusive drumming throughout, but it’s Thurston’s gig and he’s clearly tickled to have finally kept a string of these pearly tunes to himself.

  • They Say...

    Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

    "What am I going to do next for your ears to taste?" a 13-year-old Thurston Moore asks on Trees Outside the Academy's aptly named hidden track, "Thurston @13," on which Moore demonstrates the sound of rubber bands twanging and Lysol being sprayed in the air. Moore's approach has gotten more sophisticated over the years, but that playful curiosity remains in his music with and without Sonic Youth. Trees Outside the Academy is Moore's second song-based solo album; the first was 1996's Psychic Hearts, which distilled Sonic Youth's atonal pop leanings at the time into spare, sketchy rock that crackled with intensity. Trees feels like an extension -- make that a branch -- of the hypnotic calm Moore and company pursued on Rather Ripped and Sonic Nurse. However, Trees Outside the Academy goes even deeper into that meditative territory, focusing on Moore's acoustic guitar textures and songwriting in a nimble way that underscores that this is his album. Backed by violinist Samara Lubelski and the Youth's Steve Shelley on drums, Moore leads the trio through moody, layered songs like "Frozen Guitar," where Lubelski's strings sound completely organic and intrinsic to the song, even as they spar with and bleed into guest guitarist J Mascis' fiery leads (Trees Outside the Academy was recorded at Mascis' Bisquiteen studio with John Agnello, who also worked on Rather Ripped). Moore's ringing guitar lends itself as well to modern-sounding acoustic music as it does to Sonic Youth's plugged-in experimental rock, and Shelley and Lubelski are just as game; one moment, they sound like they're playing on the back porch of a farmhouse, and the next like they're playing in a downtown gallery. "Honest James" is an underground folk-rock singalong, with jubilant guitars and Charalambides' Christina Carter adding gorgeous backing vocals to Moore's laconic drawl, while "Silver Blue" is sleek, droning acoustic rock. As Trees Outside the Academy unfolds, it gets more eclectic: "Fri/End" has a melody so, well, friendly that you can almost see it wagging its tail, and pits some of Moore's most straightforward lyrics with some of his most playful stream-of-consciousness wordplay. "Wonderful Witches + Language Meanies"' silly, loose-limbed rock wouldn't fit on a Sonic Youth album, but it sounds great here, next to "Off Work"'s skronk and "Never Day"'s blissful pop. Though it's only a 37-second interlude, the title of "Free Noise Among Friends" sums it up best: not only did Moore record Trees Outside the Academy with some of his closest friends, but the album's good-natured sprawl is so appealing that it makes its listeners feel like friends, too.

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