- Critic score
- Publication
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Mar 28, 2013YOKOKIMTHURSTON displays an issue that affects several contemporary aesthetic forms when they become institutionalized: no matter how transgressive, shocking, or committed an artistic statement can be, it still remains enclosed within the safe, whitewashed, antiseptic confines of the art gallery under the sheltering halo of “high-culture” values, for the admiration of a see-but-do-not-touch enlightened elite.
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Jan 10, 2013Essentially, the album cannot live up to that expectation, because they don't seem to be trying hard, more in love with the fact that they're making an album together.
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Q MagazineOct 23, 2012It's less primal scream, more yawn. [Nov 2012, p.112]
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Oct 4, 2012[The album] is disappointing, but not because it's unmusical or masturbatory or boring, although it is sure to be dismissed as all these things. On paper I love the idea of the musical direction of the record – there are just some insurmountable problems with the execution of it.
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Oct 2, 2012The songs here are mostly ponderous, nine-minute long epics with very little in the way of song form, melody, or musical interest.
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Sep 28, 2012YOKOKIMTHURSTON is not so much a decibel-bursting showcase for the Queen of Noise and her unruly understudies as a conversation between intimates speaking in tongues and tangles-- a voyeuristic glimpse into a private, discomfiting exchange.
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Sep 25, 2012[YOKOKIMTHURSTON] distills the kind of audio radicalism these three have channeled into pop music for decades.
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Sep 25, 2012With more focus and restraint, there's no reason to think Moore, Gordon, and Ono couldn't have really run with their collaboration and made something great. Instead, YOKOKIMTHURSTON feels like an overly conceptual exercise. Maybe that's by design, but a little melody would have gone miles here.
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Sep 25, 2012YokoKimThurston feels more focused and risk-taking than some weekend distraction between friends. Sonic Youth have never shied away from releasing indulgent noise jams in the name of art for art's sake, but this album ranks above the best of their non-rock experimentation, and adds a new dimension, with both Gordon and Moore stepping back to serve as supporting noisemakers for Ono's one-of-a-kind voice.