Loser Assholes Suck All The Luck Out Of The World

Thurston Moore “Psychic Hearts” – Apropos of nothing in particular, there are some newly released reissues of some odds and ends from the Sonic Youth catalog, including Thurston Moore’s only “singer-songwriter” solo album, Psychic Hearts. Though much of that album still feels like a bunch of demos waiting to be fleshed out by his regular band, the best songs on the record make the most of their comparitively stark arrangements. It’s difficult to imagine Sonic Youth coming up with a superior arrangement for the title track, which settles into a ghostly groove that serves as an ideal backdrop for the best lyrics of Moore’s career. “Psychic Hearts” is about a cool, troubled girl from a small town, but it’s sung from the perspective of a kind-hearted and self-righteous indie boy who desperately wants to rescue her from the abusive men in her life. Both of them are sympathetic characters, but Moore allows for some ambiguity in the male character, who occasionally seems to lack some self-awareness about his hero fantasies, and appears to be projecting quite a bit on to this girl that he admits that he doesn’t even know very well. But nevermind that – he’s ultimately a good guy who wants the best for this girl, and has no desire to stand in the way of her freedom. It’s a remarkable lyric, not just for its detail and voice, but for how it balances a common straight dude fantasy with a total respect for the girl that the fantasy is being built around. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Mission of Burma “1,001 Pleasant Dreams” – For some reason, I keep getting Mission of Burma’s career confused with someone else’s (I think it’s Wire, to a certain extent), and so I was surprised to realize that their new album is actually the third LP in their career, not counting compilations, EPs, and live records. So that’s nothing like Wire at all, but they are alike in that they are rocking way harder as they get older, which is something that I think we’ve been conditioned to think of as being counterintuitive, but it definitely makes sense if you think about the fact that both bands are trying on some level to reassert primacy in the young man’s game of punk rock. If they didn’t come strong, they would most likely be written off and ignored. I’m definitely intrigued by aggressive, heavy music made by older musicians, especially punks and rappers – it’s almost always a very different feeling than similar music made by younger artists. Aggressive impulses mature in very curious ways. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)