Sonic Youth, “Live In Brooklyn 2011.” Sonic Youth was my generation’s Camelot. Too young to see Kennedy in the White House, our fin de siècle kingdom was a prolific noise band helmed by grunge’s ultimate power couple, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. The band meant a lot of things…

Sonic Youth, “In/Out/In.” My parents divorced when I was 7. The separation not only meant spending every other weekend with my dad and his new girlfriend; the fracturing of my family made me skeptical that any love could survive the perils of modern life. For a time in my…

The best albums of 2020 include (clockwise from top left): Fiona Apple, Doves, Run The Jewels, Thurston Moore, Fantastic Negrito, Jónsi, Code Orange, Hayley Williams and Tame Impala. And so, we’ve arrived at the end of this countdown of the best 75 albums of 2020. If you haven’t yet,…

Insert Foot vs. the Best of 2020. We’re starting the process of creating our year-end best-of lists at RIFF, which, for concerts at least, should be the easiest year-end list in human history. The process for this one goes something like this: Did you go to a concert in…

The place where pop and art intersect eludes most seekers. Some ambitious bands aim for the sweet spot and overshoot grossly. More commonly, a group disdains one dimension in favor of the other. Too arty for the mainstream yet too accessible for the purist, alternative rocker Thurston Moore is…

Thurston Moore Group performs at The Chapel in San Francisco on Dec. 16, 2019. Onome Uyovbievbo/Staff. SAN FRANCISCO — The Chapel hosted Thurston Moore Group Monday for an arty and unusual experience. Alternative rock icon Thurston Moore led a formidable assemblage of credentialed bohemians, including My Bloody Valentine bassist…

Thurston Moore performs at The Chapel in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2018. Photos: Sean Liming. SAN FRANCISCO — After breaking up, some legendary bands trudge on, troublesome members replaced, until they’re spit out the bottom of the county fair circuit. Others atomize; the members scattering in order to…

Upon first glance, Thurston Moore’s Rock n Roll Consciousness appears to be an EP, including just five songs. Those songs, however, stretch and unfold to fill more than 40 minutes with experimental and expansive music that could only be created by Moore. Rock n Roll Consciousness Thurston Moore April…