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Feb 28, 2013The album is fun, huge, and pleasantly confused (as evidenced in part by the out-of-place Germs cover that closes the album) but ultimately just another chapter in Moore's lifelong exploration of sound, poetry, and the darkest corners of American subcultures he helped build, and continues to add to.
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Mar 1, 2013The band's self-titled debut record is the heaviest, most dissonant music that Moore has put together in recent memory, easily out-skronking Sonic Youth's 2009 LP, The Eternal.
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Mar 5, 2013This is Thurston Moore. The same artist people have loved for decades, just under a different guise. When an artist as uniquely talented as Moore makes something for us to hear, it’s worth taking time out to give it a listen.
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UncutMar 1, 2013Awkward moments of not, this group moves as one. [Apr 2013, p.76]
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MojoMar 7, 2013Chelsea Light Moving's sound and fury certainly thrill. [Apr 2013, p.88]
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Q MagazineMar 11, 2013They may be too post-modern for some tastes, but Thurston Moore has his sonic menace back. [Apr 2013, p.97]
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Mar 4, 2013Clearly, still in love.
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Feb 28, 2013The album does not quite have the same frisson of avant weirdness that the best Sonic Youth records have, but there is more than enough quality here to once again establish the eternally youthful Thurston Moore as one of alternative rock’s most vital voices.
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Feb 28, 2013They may not live on as eternal alternative classics, but they feel emphatically, explosively alive. While preserving his natural nonchalant charm, Thurston sounds more vigorous, bellicose, twitchy and forceful than he has in years.
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Mar 5, 2013If this is indeed the next stage of Moore’s career rather than just another one-off project, it’s an assured, though sporadically underwhelming, soft launch.
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Mar 11, 2013Regardless of the catalyst, Chelsea Light Moving is an entirely successful test of Moore’s post-breakup mettle.
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Feb 28, 2013A superb debut.
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Mar 12, 2013What saves the thing is, well, Moore’s style is so ingrained that to some extent this really will start to sound more natural with time.
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Mar 4, 2013Moore could have easily shifted gears and made a clean break from his storied noise rock past, but rather he digs in deeper, and at almost 55 years of age, he’s rarely sounded as in touch with his youthful pluck.
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Mar 7, 2013While Moore’s aesthetic interests are rangy and Chelsea Light Moving most certainly exist to make them a compelling reality, the disc’s final act seems to be the most keyed-in to his recognizably arty, bookish-punk iconoclasm.
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The WireFeb 28, 2013Moore runs the risk of seeming absorbed in some kind of midlife episode, but he gets away with it by deploying punk spunk as just one of an arsenal of countercultural referents rather than as a means to regain or revisit his youth. [Mar 2013, p.50]
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MagnetApr 16, 2013Chelsea Light Moving finds Moore in renaissance mode. And it's pretty goddamn great, even if one might occasionally yearn for a Lee Ranaldo squall or Gordon vocal coo-roar up around the next bend. [No. 97, p.54]
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Mar 21, 2013This is the best mix of various recordings Moore has done since A Thousand Leaves.
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Mar 13, 2013Closing with the SST stomp of "Lips," summery strumming "Frank O'Hara Hit," and the smudged punk of "Communist Eyes," CLM never amounts to a full state of the union. Settle instead for a New York state of mind.
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Classic Rock MagazineJun 25, 2013The whole thing sounds like they had a blast. [Jun 2013, p.88]
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Feb 28, 2013It’s hard not to by won over, once again, by Moore’s indomitable, eternal teenager energy.
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Mar 22, 2013the record does manage to impress despite being vaguely familiar and prone to flights of guitar fancy for no other reason than it can.
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Mar 5, 2013None of it adds much to Moore's legacy as a guitar innovator and post-punk aesthete, but you leave the record feeling as sweaty and beat as you would hauling a couch up to a sixth-floor walk-up.
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Kerrang!Apr 5, 2013Chelsea Light Moving's debut is fantastic. [2 Mar 2013, p.51]
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Nov 1, 2013As a whole this album evokes plenty of 80’s punk/hardcore styles, sex, drugs and rock and roll anthems and the always-welcomed unexpectedness that Moore seems to always supply us with.
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May 1, 2013For better or worse, and it's both, this is kind of what you'd figure sort of: a Sonic Youth record dominated by that band's most important member.