body/head -vs- chelsea light moving

They are coming to Virginia in a couple of months, and I am excited to see them in a small room 5 minutes from my house, but I definitely fluctuate between thinking that it is a refreshingly "rock" sound they are putting out and "shouldn't they be trying harder/be better than this". I am a big fan of SY though, so I am gonna go with low expectations and hope that they are exceeded. I mean shit, I sound like an ass, I am sure it will at the least be a fun show, if not transcendant, and maybe that is what all the folks in the band are going for.

i still lol about seeing him in the mid 90s doing some kind of experimental solo gig where Thurston was scratching his strings really softly with a quarter and the dude up front yells: "BOW DOWN TO THE QUEEN OF NOIIIIIIIISSSSSSEEEEE, BABY!"

― tylerw, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 12:53 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HAHAHA for some reason this makes me think of the mega-dud singer dude on that Holger Czukay album Radio Wave Surfer

Chelsea Light Moving album streaming at NPR (though sequence appears to be out of whack)

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/17/172096457/first-listen-chelsea-light-moving-chelsea-light-moving

i like it but i wish the vocals were more fucked up/not so up front. i can hear his "lyrics" too clearly. but the guitar jams are cool.

if this album had come out after daydream nation i would have been excited. but that's just me being mean again. its sounds fine. and i listened to it! can't say that about a lot of recent thurston stuff. or lee stuff. or sy stuff. or the drummer dude's stuff. or kim stuff. i wish them all well though! i like john moloney and samara a bunch. they are awesome.

love this album. a whole lot of fun.

i'm guessing the band name is a brakhage trib, but it does make me think of a small removal van

it should!

LOL so I'm reading the US minimalism section of Taruskin's Music of the Late Twentieth Century and he mentions how in lean young times Steve Reich and Philip Glass had a moving company together called Chelsea Light Moving and I'm all 'huh neat! That would actually make a pretty good band name' and lo and behold Thurston et al already thought that thought! I guess I've been pretty oblivious of recent SY news.

― the dyspeptic Hirax (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, January 15, 2013 5:27 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

d'oh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWjKLiexGI4

Like that song, and the audio for the video is great (considering it is "live in a basement"). Pretty pro-sounding, but yeah, has me excited to see them on Monday night.

digging this record so far! maybe moreso than the lee solo joint. which i liked.

i thought he was saying "the third reich of rock and roll" like the residents album.

"sleeping where i fall" is vintage sonic youth

yep that's my fast favorite too after a few spins

CLM album is kinda bumming me out. the song skot posted at the beginning of this thread is by far the best.

I wasn't too big on this after my first listen, but its really growing on me. About the only thing I'd get rid of is "Mohawk", Thurston really doesn't pull off the spoken word thing like Lee can. And I agree about the lyrics getting too much of the spotlight, but the guitar jamz are pretty good. "Sleeping Where I Fall", "Alighted", "Groovy & Linda" and especially "Burroughs" are all really good.

"Alighted" live was really good, it's the song with the most staying power for me so far.

this is great but thurston idk

coming apart really delivers what thurston's last few records lack... actual rawness and textural variety. Thurston and Lee have solidified into riff zones, where their signature 'weird sounds' are more ornamental, adorning lame "pop" structured songs, rather than being used as building blocks. CLM improved on the last two thurston recs, but dude is hackneyed as ever.

My statement recently, which I still stand behind: Thurston & Lee have made good to really good records (but yeah pretty trad and not particularly inspired) since "the event". Kim (and Bill!) has made a singular and great record.

Finally heard that Body/Head record last night, kind of blew me away.

maria played a long song from the new lee renaldo album on her radio show and it sounded nice to me. he sounded so comfortable singing. and the guitars sounded cool.

i think all of these solo youth albums are good! but yeah, body/head miiiiight be the winner.

the licht/ranaldo twin guitar action on lee's record is very tasty

haven't listened to the body/head yet, but i just started a gig at the local record shop and was jamming the ranaldo all weekend. i think it's real good; a laid-back guitar-burner.

I need to hear the new Lee; been swamped with other stuff.

Body/Head started strong, over time it's lost something though. Its powerful - but. Like I love noise but this is getting increasing brutal to hear.

Now the body/head/gate album? I can roll with that anytime

new Lee > Body/Head > Chelsea imo. Lee getting custody of Steve is kind of a clincher for me, though.

picked up the 2LP of Body/Head yesterday - apparently the CD is impossible to find for some reason?

I like this soooo much more than the song-based stuff Thurston and Lee have been doing, but I haven't heard the new Lee just the older one. Pure noise on some of these pieces!

yeah it's pretty good....i like lee's stuff because i think he has good songs...most of CLM turned out to be crap imo

yeah I'm not even gonna listen to that one, I guess I was referring to the previous TM song-based CD, whatever that was.

I am a big Thurston fan, but that CLM record is just so damn slight. Maybe it was the record he needed to make at the time, which is cool, and live it was fun enough, but the only song I got any real kick out of was "Alighted". The Lee records have plenty of things to recommend, but the Body/Head record, whilst not something I will pull on very often, I find to be actually great. Pretty inspiring stuff, glad for Kim that it was so well received (though of course some of the press was obviously fueled by the breakup, it is still cool that the talking points still had to come back to this unruly beast of an album).

one thing I was thinking about when listening to the Body/Head 2LP was an old Albini rant that was like "why don't more bands try to sound like Metal Urbain or the Smashchords?" the record doesn't really sound like anything else, I mean what's the last LP that is just 2 electric guitars and vocals that I've heard? Charalambides, I guess, now that I think of that I see why I dig this new Kim joint so much.

The Sarin Smoke album is pretty cool, which is Pete Swanson and Tom Carter, but no vocals. I guess there are lots of two guitar records without vocals, but yeah Charalambides comes to mind as something in the realm.

the whole body/head record is pretty amazing, but the last two long ones are next level. definitely the best SY-related record of 2013.

so good, I love those spiky noisy textured guitars

clm was v good live

Am really digging The Rising Tide off Lee's new one

The answer is Lee.

I am a big Thurston fan, but that CLM record is just so damn slight. Maybe it was the record he needed to make at the time, which is cool, and live it was fun enough, but the only song I got any real kick out of was "Alighted". The Lee records have plenty of things to recommend, but the Body/Head record, whilst not something I will pull on very often, I find to be actually great. Pretty inspiring stuff, glad for Kim that it was so well received (though of course some of the press was obviously fueled by the breakup, it is still cool that the talking points still had to come back to this unruly beast of an album).

― grandavis, Wednesday, November 6, 2013 2:40 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm. all of Thurston's singer-songwriter solo records seemed to have such a heartfelt, autobiographical aspect, to a greater degree than most of his SY songs, and then the Chelsea Light Moving record just has none of that. kind of in the same way Kim is letting it all out in her new record and her interviews while Thurston doesn't wanna answer any questions about anything.

is Kim really talking much about the split, etc, other than that Elle interview? not seen much in the press for the awesome body/head record where she's talked about her personal life, and when i interviewed her a month or so ago, she wasn't exactly an open book.

Well, she's about to publish her memoirs...

she's barely begun to write them!

Oh. ha! I just remember reading 'memoirs' and my brain filled in the rest. Anyway, gossip aside, this should be great. Kim rules

Yeah maybe interviewS plural is a stretch but the one interview was still a pretty big deal

Oh, that interview was the bomb, but I also think that interview is why she hasn't really talked about stuff since then. anyone go to kim's exhibition in new york recently?

has ANYBODY listened to the new dead C, FUCK.

i have heard the new dead c. it is as good as all their other good albs.

do people like the new Ranaldo more than last years? Haven't heard either

Yeah I prefer the new one, feels looser and more road tested, very Murray Street in some of its long jams

body count vs chelsea light moving

maybe they can just go old school classic rock style and thurston/steve leading one "Sonic Youth" around the country, while kim/lee lead another

Hah, maybe. I like Lee's records fine, and don't dislike anything any of them have done, but would rank them in the same order. In a few more years I am fine with any of them collaborating keep in mind, I just think it would be a bad move for a while.

am guessing - apart from the fact he is a great drummer - thurst has hired steve not least to give him a regular wage? as he's the yoof probs not being offered solo album deals?

That seems a little condescending tbh

Those sweet sweet solo Thurston Moore gig paychecks

yu cnt hv snc yth wtht sgnr ov my fv sy sng...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ZXzAtnmfQ

OTMFM

just spitballing. the rest of the band live in london, but steve is, i guess, still in the US? again, like i said, he's also a great drummer.

and yes brother james rules

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t1.0-9/10464312_481955435282178_6656355165409461085_n.jpg

First time I got to see "Brother James" live my head exploded. I mean shit, the Kim hit list is long and mighty, but fuck yeah "Brother James" is singularly awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPw1_ULjZLw

death valley 69 EP i bought in 1985 (with brother james on it) was a BIG deal to me. just fucked me up in all the right ways. the acid helped too.

I still need to get a copy of that... I recently got the 7" of DV 69, did not realize that both sides are earlier versions!

this thread seems full of blank spaces, but...

the Body/Head album “The Switch” is eerie and amorphous and is really great imo. I never got around to listening to SYR 6, 7, 8, 9 (although this recording has echoes in what I’ve heard from the earlier SYR stuff), but I was so disappointed by Sonic Youth’s two post-O’Rourke albums that I thought I had lost interest in them, and any future projects related to them, forever. This reminds me of the aspects of their music I always loved, and why for 20 years I thought that they were the best band ever

Body/Head is the best post-SY band/proj for me and it isn't even close

agreed, and The Switch is my favorite of theirs so far

Oh, thanks. I'm loving this so far.

Although it was released in summer, it felt really right for the cold, grey winter day.

yeah, this is good, I'd only listened to the first album before this and didn't really like it much

i've enjoyed the thurston / lee post-SY solo stuff i've heard, but it usually makes me just want to listen to SY. body/head definitely is more interesting / involving. need to dig in more with the new one.

Body/Head is like the first Sonic Youth anything I really fucks with after the SST era

I dug the set I play Thurston (and his band) play last month — felt like an hour-long version of “Elegy for All the Dead Rock Stars.”

(Should’ve read over that before hitting “post.”)

The Switch is no joke. I wrote about it back in July:

https://www.spin.com/2018/07/body-head-the-switch-review/

thanks, Raymond! I enjoyed reading that

Ha, we have opposite seasonal responses to this album!:

Consciously or unconsciously, Body/Head’s latest is indisputably an album for or about summertime, a No Wave mirror held up to our present, perspiring moment.