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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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Classic Rock MagazineJun 25, 2013The whole thing sounds like they had a blast. [Jun 2013, p.88]
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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.
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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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Kerrang!Apr 5, 2013Chelsea Light Moving's debut is fantastic. [2 Mar 2013, p.51]
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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 21, 2013This is the best mix of various recordings Moore has done since A Thousand Leaves.
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Mar 18, 2013He can say far more with molten noise jags and spiraling, convulsive solos than he can with mind-clearing Beat poetry like the seven-minute "Mohawk."
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Mar 13, 2013By attempting to give us what we want, and provide reassurance that the Sonic Youth legacy is in safe hands, Moore has somehow managed to make it look weaker and less appealing than it ever was.
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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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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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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 11, 2013Regardless of the catalyst, Chelsea Light Moving is an entirely successful test of Moore’s post-breakup mettle.
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MojoMar 7, 2013Chelsea Light Moving's sound and fury certainly thrill. [Apr 2013, p.88]
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Mar 7, 2013It goes through stretches of boredom. From a distance, the album seems concise and poppy. But up close, the heavy grazing of each song bursts its seams.
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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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Mar 5, 2013It's all a tad by the book, but the book is well loved and worth re-reading, so why not?
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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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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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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 4, 2013Clearly, still in love.
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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 4, 2013Chelsea Light Moving should feel like a tired hashing-over of sonic tropes, considering what a prolific career the front man's had. But it doesn't; it's a lively, noisy semi-resurrection.
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UncutMar 1, 2013Awkward moments of not, this group moves as one. [Apr 2013, p.76]
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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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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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Feb 28, 2013Sonic Youth fans should find plenty to love, but we’re more intrigued by the instances where Moore leaves his established comfort zone.
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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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Feb 28, 2013A superb debut.
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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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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, 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.