Thurston Moore’s solo catalogue contains moments of frenzied abstraction. An artist whose stance seems to linger at the cutting edge, his continuous lean towards the ground-breaking can result in all-out cacophony, a true student of noise and extremities.
‘Screen Time’ steps away from this, an album of quiet beauty and frazzled nerve-endings, a series of devoutly minimalist constructions that aim to reflect the introspective inertia that came with lockdown. Constructed in 2020, it’s a project marked by frailty, but one that continually longs towards beauty.
‘The Station’ finds the guitar at its most frost-like, the note-flurries and chord-clusters almost percussive in their approach. Elements of John Cage and Cecil Taylor permeate the instrumentation, with Thurston’s thirst for abstraction matched to an incisive use of space. ‘The Town’ is an intriguing, cyclical venture, while ‘The Home’ – with its more developed, almost Baroque template – carrying a subtle promise of joy.
An album that never sits still, ‘Screen Time’ is guitar-based minimalism at its most anxious. ‘The View’ feels solemn, a picture of isolation, while ‘The Neighbour’ seems to probe the enforced divide between passers-by across its 100 second span. – Yet the album can also be open, and accessible. ‘The Walk’ shimmers with a metallic gleam, while ‘The Parkbench’ collides together chord work that feels reminiscent of Steve Gunn with a thirst for dissonance.
Closer ‘The Realization’ is Thurston Moore at his most meditative, but it’s far from a simple ‘chill out’ piece. This isn’t background music in any way – it’s studied, in-depth, and lived, the low level buzz reflecting the unceasing tension that permeated our daily lives as the pandemic wound its path.
A record that thrives on subtlety, ‘Screen Time’ is engaging but never simple, its quiet complexities taking time to truly unfurl amid Thurston Moore's painterly landscapes.
7/10
Words: Robin Murray
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