Dear Thurston Moore,
Hope all is well with you and yours. What grade’s Coco in now? Aw, that’s great, man. OK, so I guess I should get to the point. Well, I just checked out The Eternal and wasn’t sure what to expect. I have to say that I’m getting a little tired of you all releasing consistently awesome albums after — what — a quarter century? I truly believe you all could afford to pull a Billy Corgan and release something completely abysmal or monumentally stupid, just to change things up. That’s what most middle-aged rockers do, right? But no, for your reintroduction into the indie realm with Matador, you just had to masterfully sew the best of your punk and noise facets, carefully combining the concise pop-oriented material a la Rather Ripped with more malleable, free-flowing, post-rock-informed experimentation circa A Thousand Leaves. And so I, as a music writer who thrives on creativity and distinct identity, am left with nothing else to say except, “Sonic Youth release another killer record, blah blah blah,” with 99.9 percent of the rest of the music criticism world. Thanks, jerk.
