Sonic Youth’s forever young founding member and living levend Thurston Moore is back with his new album, Flow Critical Lucidity. We spoke to the man himself to find out more.
Here is something I need to address straight away: Despite us not posting any English content there, the official Sonic Youth Instagram page has been following us, Kıyı Müzik for several years now. I suppose you are not the one in charge of that page, right?
Thurston Moore: Not at all. Steve Shelley is the one who does a lot of the sonicyouth.com site facilitation. I see what’s going on, but I don’t really do too much. I could see how Steve Shelley would follow you, though. (laughs) Especially if your site has been pro-Sonic Youth or whatever. I don’t know. That’s cool though. I like that.
How is the weather in London right now?
All week has been beautiful here. It’s been like the Mediterranean, thank God. (laughs) It’s unusual, but everybody’s loving it. Who knows how long it’ll last? It’ll definitely get dreary and rainy and cold and gray here as it’s meant to do, I would imagine. But who knows? Maybe the climate crisis is burning up all of Southern Europe, but making England this new kind of Eden. (laughs) I don’t know. It’s been very nice here. Are you in Istanbul?
I’m normally in Istanbul, but right now, I’m in Ankara. I don’t know if you’ve been here.
No. I’ve always wanted to go to Ankara.
And I’m moving to Berlin next month.
Wow, that’ll be amazing. Have you been to Berlin before?
No, first time.
Wow. You’ll love it. You know, my cousin has been living in Istanbul for a few years. I get a lot of Istanbul updates from her. And she has a really lovely life there. She’s so in love with Turkey. She comes from Miami. (laughs)
How long has she been living there?
Maybe five, or six years. She has a dog and the whole social scene there. The last time I played in Istanbul, she was there and I saw where she lived. I forget the name of the Street. It was that cobblestone street that goes almost straight down. You know, where the hipster street is. (laughs)
Istanbul can be pretty great, I gotta say. It has the best, fish sandwich, along the Bosphorus there. You have those men who are catching the fish and making the sandwiches and selling them. That’s really heavenly. I just love walking along there and seeing the shoe-shining men. It’s fantastic. There’s a good record store there too.
Which one?
I don’t know, but they had really good secondhand records. I bought some great things there. It has really good, old, psychedelic things. It’s cool.
I remember being on a boat on the Bosphorus. There was another boat in front of us and the man there had organized a lit-up sign on the bridge that said, “Will you marry me?” He proposed to his girlfriend on the boat by having a sign on the bridge. Maybe that’s a common thing that people do. But I was like, “Wow, what’s going on? Oh, that’s pretty romantic.”
Yeah. Super cute.
I think it’s a pretty romantic city, you know? I think it’s fantastic. I like it a lot. I miss being there, it’s been six years, maybe.
I missed your last Istanbul concert with Konstrukt, unfortunately.
Good times. We did a gig and a recording. It has a funny name, Turkish Belly. (laughs) Do you know that record?
Yeah.
Oh, you do? Not too many people know that record.
I got reminded of it thanks to this interview after many years. Great record.
Thanks. Then I did a duo with Umut Çağlar. Two guitars. Such a sweetheart.
Looking forward to seeing you here again.
I hope so. Yeah.
Obviously, you have a new album that’s out. Let me start by asking this: What does the title, Flow Critical Lucidity, actually mean?
It’s this line from one of the songs where it’s all about coexisting between the dream state and your reality of the physical state. It’s having this responsibility between these two states of being. It’s kind of being in a place of lucid dreaming, being in a dream state, but having a realization of the actuality of being in the dream state. In some ways, it’s like the word hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is when you start to wake up and you’re kind of between these two places, the dream world and the reality. You start realizing, “Oh, I’m moving away from the dream world.” It’s this realization, but I guess for Flow Critical Lucidity, the allegory is about this kind of respect for being aware of reality. I really like the word woke. It’s been very demonized in the political sphere. But for me, it’s a fantastic word to embrace the idea of seeing the transparency of the oppressions that we have to deal with in our world, having some responsibility for it, and dignifying the culture to be in resistance to it. So in some ways, it’s a bit of a political title, but it’s also a title of holding on to your desires and your dreams for a better world. A lot of that is implied in that title, I think.
Recently I have spoken to Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue about our collective ability to separate reality from dreams, and he claimed that because the events of unfolding in real world is happening faster than ever, it’s becoming harder and harder to puıt the distinction between the two realms.
I don’t really underestimate the intelligence of specifically youth culture to distinguish between the real and the unreal, but I understand what Jonathan’s saying. We are inundated with so much artificial information and intelligence, and a lot of it’s very devious to actually sway people’s thoughts. In some ways, it reminds you of Blade Runner or some early Philip K. Dick science fiction novel about a future where there are simulacra and robotic people who are disguised as flesh and blood people, and you can’t tell who is who, to the point where you’re having relationships with the unreal. What was once science fiction is seemingly coming more into our reality right now with artificial intelligence. For me, that’s really interesting, because I think that kind of technology is unstoppable. But it’s also a technology that is going to, like anything, have both benefits and consequences. So there will always be the struggle. But, you know, life is always about the art of struggle, anyway.
When I talk to a 15 year old, I don’t feel that they are particularly anxious about the world, as hectic as it is with this incredible flow and influx of information that is either false or true. I think in some ways, the human brain has the capacity to deal with it, because it had the capacity to create it. So in some ways, I think it’s creating a more intelligent generation. I find teenagers to be far more aware and alert and sharper and kind of sophisticated than when I was a teenager. When I was a teenager, it seemed to be a slightly more just trusting in the world as a crazy place. It felt completely less dangerous. But when I talk to a teenager now, I don’t feel like they think they’re in a place of danger because their reality is something they don’t have anything to compare to. There’s so many young people dealing with a much more violent society because of war and because of the high grade of weaponry that exists. The world is so much more weaponized now, it’s a more violent world. But, you know, I think every generation has their own sort of progression with with being human, the human condition. So I have a lot of trust in youth to at least continue resisting the control mechanisms of right-wing fascism.
Speaking of your trust in youth, I would argue that you have always been a youthful person. You are always “new in town”, making new friends and connections on the way, and always seem open to new things for trying out.
I mean, I like new and old. (laughs) I give equal value to new and old. When I go to bookstores and record stores, I’m really interested in the old, primarily. I’m looking for relics, you know. A lot of education is in the documents from the past, and it’s so important to retain them. I love to archive them and have a library of old literature. When I say old literature, I mean the sixties poetry and the seventies poetry, and recordings from the fifties and sixties. That, to me, is really key. But, you know, I’m also extremely interested in any new person, working with interesting ideas and experimental and challenging music.
The music world is always considered to be a young man’s game, but I don’t agree with that. I think it’s actually very liberated as far as age. I was looking at images of PJ Harvey’s new tour, and it’s really beautiful, because her band is these older gentlemen. They’re obviously people my age, if not older. These silver haired male musicians that she has on stage with her, I just thought was the coolest look in the world. There’s something about it that was really radical. She had these great musicians on stage, and they were just older men as opposed to young hipsters. (laughs) Anyway, I find that in the art world, whether it’s music or cinema or whatever, I find it to be fairly open to age. I think there’s specific issues within that construct, such as it being more difficult for an older woman to get roles in cinema as compared to a younger woman. That’s always been a complaint and an issue in that culture. But for the most part, age is has always been a dignity in the arts, in a way. I always feel like I’m in some kind of apprenticeship, like I’ve not even started yet as a serious composer, or writer, that I’m still kind of finding my way at 66 years old, even though I had this entire history with a band like Sonic Youth. I felt like that was just a bit of a gestation for my future, to tell you the truth. (laughs) So I don’t really look back at Sonic Youth with the same kind of import that I see in the media sometimes. That was my childhood as opposed to my adulthood, which is now.
I think all of us are always finding our own way throughout life.
For sure.
I know that music may be autobiographical to some degree, and I although this album’s lyrics were mostly written by your wife Eva Prinz, the narrative on “New in Town” literally opens with someone young, a new kid lost in the big city. The events seem to take place in the eighties with the mention of bands such as Bad Brains and Fugazi. You know what I’m trying to say, it sounds like you back when you first moved into New York City. But it also sounds like you’re still that young person, ever learning.
Right. The idea that you just plugged in, that you’re new in town is almost like an idea of epiphany, realising what is the value of being alive, identifying with the community and finding this exciting and hopefully safe space to be creative in. That’s what I always recognized from going to hardcore gigs in the early eighties. I was not a hardcore kid, I was already in my late twenties, and the hardcore scene was filled with twenty-year-olds. It was a big gap. I was this older, late-twenties person going to hardcore shows standing in the back or standing against the wall. I wasn’t slam dancing, the stage diving and all that. Even though I did play in one of the bands for a second in New York. I kind of intersected with the scene to some degree, but I was not really part of that scene. I wasn’t really hanging out with all the hardcore kids. I wanted to, but I was already ensconced in Sonic Youth and the whole art rock world around. Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch, people like this. I was also a little younger than people like Glenn Branca, and a little older than the hardcore kids. Being born in 1958, I just felt a little caught between these established scenes and cultures in a way. That’s why Sonic Youth comes out as an anomaly, you know? We kind of connected with people that were more in our world, people like Nick Cave or The Butthole Surfers and The Meat Puppets, people our age. It was exciting to find these bands that were more marginalized and just outside of the standards of hardcore or punk or new wave. We were kind of uncategorizable, but we were certainly connected.
The idea for me was always about the power of community and finding this identity and devoting yourself to this vocation of being a creative person, whether it’s in music or writing or visual art. A song like “New in Town” is all about this empowerment of discovery. I don’t know if that’s the right word. It’s this feeling empowered by discovering this righteous observation of a band like Minor Threat or Bad Brains or Fugazi. All of a sudden, you feel an encouragement to plug your guitar in. That’s what that song is, you just plugged in. You’re new in town. There’s also a bit of a wistfulness in that song. It’s not like I’m playing raging guitars. It could be that, but instead, it’s this really treated guitar music where in recording, I’m using different implements underneath the strings and I’m picking on either side of them and mixing that. And I’m actually cutting up the tape afterward to create this song structure. The song only exists in its moment of creativity. It’s the one song on the record that I won’t be able to play live at all because it’s just all about what it is to that day of recording. I like that. That’s sort of making this song really ephemeral. Here it is and then it’s gone, you know? The whole thing of being young and being new in town is a very sudden situation. You have to hold on to it forever because it turns into something else. You grow up.
My friend wanted me to ask you this: Name one crazy concert memory from New York back in the eighties. It can be crazy in a good way or in a bad way. (both laugh)*
You know, it’s funny, we were just talking about diving off stage and slam dancing. I never really did that so much, but at some point, I got very encouraged and inspired to be more physically wild on stage during the eighties. A lot of it was informed by going to see bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat. We weren’t a hardcore band, but I started employing the physicality of that into what Sonic Youth was doing on stage. We became a more physically rowdy band on stage playing our art rock noise music. And I enjoyed that. Sometimes it would have consequences because you could get hurt. We were playing a gig at CBGB in the eighties and during one song I decided that I was going to jump off the stage into the audience. And so I did. As I flew into the air, the entire crowd that was hopefully going to catch me separated and I landed on top of a table with a bunch of bottles, which all broke into my chest and bruised and cut me, and I fell to the floor and everybody was just like looking at me like, “Why did you do that?!” (both laugh) I was on the floor thinking, “That didn’t really work out as planned, did it?” I scurried up and climbed back on the stage just completely battered and bruised and ended the song. I didn’t go to the hospital, but I didn’t do that ever again. I would go into the audience once in a while, mostly when it was on really big festival stages. I thought it was really fun to actually scale down the barriers into the photographer’s pit and then chase photographers around with the guitar and slash at them with it, and sometimes go into the audience and surf on top of the audience with the guitar because there were so many people. But at CBGB early on, I didn’t have that kind of enthusiastic protection. (laughs) I just found myself face flat on the floor jumping off a diving board into an empty pool. I always remember that as far as a crazy move.
Yeah, it’s always about getting hurt. I once was playing guitar on stage and I was on my hands and knees and sort of hammering on it with the drumstick underneath the 12 fret. I was just kind of really hammering on it and moving it around and I missed one of my whacks with the stick and I whacked my thumb with it. It seriously split it open.
Oh my God.
To the point where I was gushing blood. I wrapped it up with gaffer tape and continued the set, but for almost three months, I had this huge, swollen, destroyed thumb on my left hand, and my dog healed it. My dog would sit there and with his healing, holistic saliva would constantly lick it to repair. So yeah, it’s very important to have a dog in your house. (laughs)
I agree. It’s important to have pets.
Well, we have two dogs. It’s wonderful. It’s like having two, like, two doctors in the house in a way. Psychologically and physically, they’re just wonderful to have. Their love is truly unconditional, it’s the exchange of pure affection, you know? It’s fantastic.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured have their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of your own lyrics would you like to see written on your stone?
Maybe the very first Sonic Youth song on the very first Sonic Youth record called “The Burning Spear.” And it would have the lyric, “I’m not afraid to say I’m scared in my bed, I’m deep in prayer.”
Thank you, Deniz. Thank you for doing this.
You can check out Thurston Moore’s Bandcamp page here.
