Thurston Moore

Ex-Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore is a musos' musician, rated as one of the world's greatest guitarists and for one night only he brought his new band to Melbourne's Hamer Hall for the Melbourne Festival. Arriving onstage to little fanfair, and still jetlagged, Moore launched into songs from his 2011 Demolished Thoughts LP. From jangly pop to blues-tinged rock, and with his trademark cool vocals, Moore still bears the musical character and spirit of the great Sonic Youth. In fact, seeing this concert shows just how much that band was shaped by him.

For the audience, this was a new way to see Moore. He has been to Melbourne before, playing gigs at the Big Day Out and grungy bandrooms with the 'Sonics', in front of a mosh pit of swirling arms, legs and boots. Almost in defiance of the genteel Hamer Hall, his audience refused to stay seated, with many patrons going back and forth to the bar for more beer. You can't take Sonic Youth out of Thurston, and you can't take pub culture out of his audience.

What makes Moore an exciting artist is his songs and the sounds he extracts from his guitars. He can play sweet, catchy indie songs about friendship and then unleash guitar discord that sounds as though the apocalypse is arriving on the back of a swarm of jet-powered wasps. The long slides into guitar fuzz and feedback is well known to anyone with a Sonic Youth album, and it's interesting that Moore still incorporates this into his new work with the new band, Chelsea Light Moving. It might make me sound like a geek, but these moments of sonic anarchy are more like agony to me. I can't abide guitar feedback, personally, and it does get a bit pretentious, if not painful to the ears.

But Moore is trying different things, incorporating a concert harp, and violin into songs like 'Orchard Street', 'Blood Never Lies', and 'Circulation' giving them a sweetness and folk-like feel. The guitar-playing is still super-hot, though.

Those few who left before the encore missed out big time: Moore previewed a new song from an upcoming album that is as incendiary as Sonic Youth at its very best. Apparently the album is out next March. I'm excited.

On stage, Moore played alongside Keith Wood (gtr), Samara Lubelski (bass), John Moloney (drums), and Mary Lattimore on harp.

Support act Kieran Ryan impressed with a full band, with even more instruments than Moore, and a sound with shades of The Smiths and Arcade Fire.

Sara Bannister