Sonic Life

Sonic Life: A Memoir

Equal parts personal memoir and deep fan reflection spanning over 50 years of sonic exploration, Thurston Moore’s Sonic Life is a fascinating street level account of his career both inside and outside of the bands that made him, paying homage to heroes, peers, and his own forays into the more radical reaches of 20th and 21st century sound. Primarily engaged in the who/what/when/where and how of his own artistic journey, and light on interpersonal politics, so much of Moore’s writing is centered around his interactions with the worlds of both music and literature, as well as the ghost of his childhood friend Harold Paris, who remains one of the few constant figures in his story outside of the members of Sonic Youth.

Tracing his early years as a rock-obsessed kid turned teenager in the wilds of southern Connecticut, through his first pilgrimages with Harold into New York City to catch revelatory glimpses of Suicide and Patti Smith during their Lower East Side heyday, and the total immersion into the punk and no wave scenes that would eventually give birth to both The Coachmen and Sonic Youth, the opening chapters of the book are chock-full of wide-eyed interactions with a city and world Moore had previously only read about, and been transfixed by, in magazines. Following his personal arc through the subsequent art and music explosions he would participate in as Sonic Youth grew through their formative DIY years in the 1980s and into their early-to-mid-1990’s corporate heyday, the majority of the memoir is heavy on pre-2000’s band lore, but leaves less pages to navigate the aftermath of grunge— and the year punk “broke” with Nirvana— along with Sonic Youth’s other significant output throughout the late-1990s and into the new millennium, which is one of the few drawbacks to this otherwise in-depth tome. Complete with insights on everything from the rise of hip hop and 80’s hardcore, to independent labels like SST and Sub Pop, and the wild experimentation happening around the avant-garde and jazz scenes of the moment, it’s amazing just how many mini-epochs and players are given voice and context in this engaging and informative read.

But what’s even more impressive is how Moore, and Sonic Youth as a band, touched on all of those things, incorporated them into their ever-expanding universe, and helped subtly, and subversively, push them into the mainstream in ways many people never thought possible. All of which the book fleshes out through the lens of a subcultural raconteur and record collector who became part of the very history he had initially immersed himself in as a teenager when first reading rags like Creem and Rock Scene in his childhood bedroom in Bethel. And for that, in so many ways, it’s a living testament to a true disciple of rock and roll who somehow always managed to be in the right place at the right time with the right people, and to have a front row seat to what would become some of the most defining moments in the annals of underground music, both in New York City and around the country. All while making a joyful noise to anyone who would listen along the way.

Sonic life indeed.

(Sonic Youth on their first-ever television appearance performing a cover of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” on Night Music from Nov. 26, 1989, accompanied by host David Sanborn, Daniel Lanois, Don Fleming, and the Indigo Girls, alongside members of the house band.)