Better than Rather Ripped for sure, but there is still work to be done if the standards are going to go back to normal. It is definitely a grower, but its limitation is the amount of it that grows on you. I don't see the point in comparing it to Psychic Hearts because they are very different records and a different Thurston Moore made them.

[SynthethicalY]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

Better than Rather Ripped for sure, but there is still work to be done if the standards are going to go back to normal. It is definitely a grower, but its limitation is the amount of it that grows on you. I don't see the point in comparing it to Psychic Hearts because they are very different records and a different Thurston Moore made them.

Yeah, that is how I see it. Both records stand on their own accord. Today when I go out, I have to buy it.

[badgercorn]

I'm listening to it for the second time now and it hasn't quite grabbed me yet, but I can tell it's going to be a grower. My favourites are the more boisterous ones, Wonderful Witches and Trees Outside The Academy, which sound more like Psychic Hearts. I keep hearing snatches of melodies and riffs that are familiar from Sonic Nurse / Rather Ripped..

[SynthethicalY]

I just bought my copy today. And am Listening, to it.

[neptuneg]

"Off Work" sounds like a mix between Turquoise Boy and Waist

[naomi]

I forgot to mention...I really love his vocals and lyrics on this CD!! Best in a long time!

My favorites are songs 1-4 and 11 but really the whole thing is good.

[triggercutter]

does anyone know why this album has the explicit lyrics sticker? i havent listened to it that closely, but i havent noticed anything that could be considered explicit.

[mysonichaircut]

its fuckin crap. right, it is no imorovisation, but its not composed too. its childish and poor. Following three notes in a line up and down with your voice is not composition to me. and the violin sounds like a synth. thurston should turn off the amp for a year, go for holydays, and listen to people who know about these kind of sounds, who do more akkustic - architecture with unplugged sound, what this album obviously wants to be, and then retry. This sounds like 10 year old boy having his first piano lesson.

Originally Posted by mysonichaircut

its fuckin crap. right, it is no imorovisation, but its not composed too. its childish and poor. Following three notes in a line up and down with your voice is not composition to me. and the violin sounds like a synth. thurston should turn off the amp for a year, go for holydays, and listen to people who know about these kind of sounds, who do more akkustic - architecture with unplugged sound, what this album obviously wants to be, and then retry. This sounds like 10 year old boy having his first piano lesson.

Well done, a brief and not childish rant/review at all. You really have a talent for describing things, haven't you? I never knew that Thurston Moore was making imorovisation records at all. Perhaps you meant imoronicasation, since that'd be more apt to describe your writing skills.

[mysonichaircut]

^now you know.
and yes, i am really talented, hat an A last weak in writing skills, you funny kid.

[Moshe]

amg 4/5

Reviewby Heather Phares"What am I going to do next for your ears to taste?" a 13-year-old Thurston Moore asks on Trees Outside the Academy's aptly named hidden track, "Thurston @13," on which Moore demonstrates the sound of rubber bands twanging and Lysol being sprayed in the air. Moore's approach has gotten more sophisticated over the years, but that playful curiosity remains in his music with and without Sonic Youth. Trees Outside the Academy is Moore's second song-based solo album; the first was 1996's Psychic Hearts, which distilled Sonic Youth's atonal pop leanings at the time into spare, sketchy rock that crackled with intensity. Trees feels like an extension — make that a branch — of the hypnotic calm Moore and company pursued on Rather Ripped and Sonic Nurse. However, Trees Outside the Academy goes even deeper into that meditative territory, focusing on Moore's acoustic guitar textures and songwriting in a nimble way that underscores that this is his album. Backed by violinist Samara Lubelski and the Youth's Steve Shelley on drums, Moore leads the trio through moody, layered songs like "Frozen Guitar," where Lubelski's strings sound completely organic and intrinsic to the song, even as they spar with and bleed into guest guitarist J Mascis' fiery leads (Trees Outside the Academy was recorded at Mascis' Bisquiteen studio with John Agnello, who also worked on Rather Ripped). Moore's ringing guitar lends itself as well to modern-sounding acoustic music as it does to Sonic Youth's plugged-in experimental rock, and Shelley and Lubelski are just as game; one moment, they sound like they're playing on the back porch of a farmhouse, and the next like they're playing in a downtown gallery. "Honest James" is an underground folk-rock singalong, with jubilant guitars and Charalambides' Christina Carter adding gorgeous backing vocals to Moore's laconic drawl, while "Silver Blue" is sleek, droning acoustic rock. As Trees Outside the Academy unfolds, it gets more eclectic: "Fri/End" has a melody so, well, friendly that you can almost see it wagging its tail, and pits some of Moore's most straightforward lyrics with some of his most playful stream-of-consciousness wordplay. "Wonderful Witches + Language Meanies"' silly, loose-limbed rock wouldn't fit on a Sonic Youth album, but it sounds great here, next to "Off Work"'s skronk and "Never Day"'s blissful pop. Though it's only a 37-second interlude, the title of "Free Noise Among Friends" sums it up best: not only did Moore record Trees Outside the Academy with some of his closest friends, but the album's good-natured sprawl is so appealing that it makes its listeners feel like friends, too.

[Moshe]

http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/10583

8/10


For over a decade Thurston Moore’s solo ventures have provided a means to indulge and detail his deepest noise tendencies. Whether the spiralling improvisation of Three Incredible Ideas or the directionless avant-garde of Lost To The City, there has been little that resembled the Sonic Youth spill-over that Moore’s 1995-released Psychic Hearts provided. But whilst Trees Outside The Academy is an explicit return to the realms of traditional song writing structures, this is a barren call. Rather than harking back to the glut of inspiration that came between Experimental Jet Set... and Washing Machine, Moore has never sounded so openly emancipated from the confines of the New York noiseniks.
Loitering between a state of elation and deflation, Moore's stoic delivery is ridden with an agitated hesitancy. With transitional contemplations flooding the brain, the music befits this condition. 'Frozen Gtr' opens with an industrial wail as dead waves of noise sit on the cusp of breaking in, a contented cist consistently threatening to eat away and overawe it all. The peculiar psychopathic smirk on 'Fri/End'’s chin-up Americana ("O’ how I love the smell of your charred remains / nothing better than to meet you sweetheart in severed chains") is scythed down by distortion, whilst poignant instrumental 'American Coffin' struggles to pick itself from its scar-scattered knees, with any uplifting sentiment cloaked by a skewed unease.
Turning its head away from any no-wave groundings, Trees Outside… comes to resemble certain recent releases from Moore's imprint Ecstatic Peace - from the aching detail of Wooden Wand through to Tall Firs’ off-kilter fragility. Though Moore is constantly at the forefront the contributors are decisive, whether the subtle orchestral undertone that MV&EE's Samara Lubelski's provides throughout or noise-mongerer Leslie Keffer's fleeting industrial scrawl on 'Off Work'. It generates the cutting folk-noise mismatch that Jackie-O Motherfucker mastered. But, for all the recent noiseities, other than 'Free Noise Among Friends' Moore has fundamentally distanced the doses of drone in favour of a more traditional guise. Charalambides' Christina Carter's bawling vocal contribution on 'Honest James' clashes with Moore's sullen delivery and flags up similarities with Will Oldham's rasp lapping over Dawn McCarthy on The Letting Go.
As GOWN's Andrew McGregor's sprawling solo and Steve Shelley's splintering percussion gnaw at 'Wonderful Witches', amid Moore's lost-in-lust lyrics entangling some sort of adolescent melodrama ("If you don’t shut up soon I'll have to quit the play"), it is the closest Trees Outside… comes to resembling a bona-fide Sonic Youth outing. Even when J Mascis – whose house in Amherst, Massachusetts was where the album was recorded – contributes his usual steady-handed gusto, locking horns like a silver-haired bull, he is woven into tracks - specifically 'The Shape Is In A Trance' - in a way that builds a depth to the record whilst Moore remains on a pedestal.
There is no heyday, there is no swansong, and for Moore continuation has always had more significance than reiteration. But off the back of Daydream Nation’s recent outing, retrospect seems a central theme. Whereas previous solo outings have often just provided an opportunity for Moore to further distance himself as he figured out the direction Sonic Youth were to take, Trees Outside The Academy is the sound of Moore in a moment of escapism, figuring out where he is going. Psychic Hearts closed with ‘Elegy For All The Dead Rock Stars’ - a twenty minute slowly-churning instrumental that descended into a white noise assault only to come calmly back out. Curtains close on Trees Outside... with 'Thurston@13' - an archive recording of a teenage Moore, petulant and self-involved, stating "what you have heard is me wasting time again asking myself deep inside why the fuck am I doing this".
It caps it all off to be as blunt, open and insightful as you would expect from someone you're now on first name terms with.

[Moshe]

http://www.kingblind.com/2007_09_01_michiganblind_archive.html#469142835502 229628

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy (Album Review)

 

To a music fan, Thurston Moore can be an ubiquitous presence. Of course, his work with Sonic Youth makes the guitarist a constant point of reference in discussion of contemporary rock music or guitar experimentalism, but it seems, especially as of late, that Moore's influence is felt as much through his identity as a critic, talent scout, label head, and, simply, as a music fan. Moore's label, Ecstatic Peace!, recently entered one of its most active eras, and he often appears as a talking head in music documentaries, big and small. Nearing 50, Moore's not lost any of his exuberance for the sounds that he loves, and though the steady flow of improvisational collaborations that once marked his discography has slowed just a bit, Thurston's enthusiastic participation with a new generation of noisemakers has been the source of a number of fruitful new partnerships.

Sonic Youth, of course, aren't idly sitting by; their last disc, Rather Ripped is perhaps their best in a decade, and an ongoing series of concert performances of the whole of their classic Daydream Nation have been unequivocal successes. Amidst it all, Moore's been crafting a selection of songs that have coalesced into what, surprisingly, is only his second solo disc of song-based material. Psychic Hearts, which dropped in 1995 and recently got the reissue treatment from DGC, was the first most got to hear of Thurston's songs outside of the Sonic Youth canon, composed with some discernible deviations from the contemporary Sonic Youth sound, and performed in a stripped-down trio format with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Two-Dollar Guitar's Tim Foljahn. The material was sometimes more accessible at its core than Moore's writing for Sonic Youth, and its more personal tone was offset by the distancing of Moore's vocals via reverb and other effects.

Trees Outside the Academy, more than a decade later, is a further departure from Sonic Youth's sound, both in terms of composition and instrumentation, a more straightforward musical statement than those we've come to expect from Thurston, though not so much so that it's detached from his usual musical sensibilities.

That Trees Outside the Academy is more accessible than Moore's usual output is a fair assertion to make, though there are facets innate to his music that seem sure to prevent the gangly guitarist from ever crafting an album of pure pop. The most pronounced change is Moore's trading in of his usual Fenders for an acoustic guitar, and with the frequent accompaniment of Samara Lubelski’s violin, the album takes on a decidedly acoustic feel. An assortment of collaborators augment the album's core trio of Moore, Lubelski and Steve Shelley, including Charlamabides' Christina Carter, J Mascis (who played host to the disc's recording), and Leslie Keffer, who lays down a bit of the album's noise. Along with Moore's signature melodic progressions, Mascis' hot licks, and the jaunts into brief caustic flare, however, Trees Outside the Academy bears some of Moore's most plainly pretty work.

Sonic Youth's music is full of beauty, but it's rare that there's not a jagged edge to serve as its foil; on songs like "Never Light," though, there's no such interruption, and many of the album's most unabashedly comely tracks are its most enjoyable. "Silver Blue," with its elegant melody, and "Honest James," on which Moore duets with Christina Carter, are highlights, and some of the disc's more rock-imbued compositions, epitomized by the frenetic "Wonderful Witches," can feel like intrusions on the ambiance of the disc. The surprising beauty of Trees Outside the Academy is its most endearing quality, especially when left unfettered by up-tempo flourishes or disjointed changes in direction. It's not often that one hopes Thurston Moore plays it straight, but on this disc, that's the case.

In interviews, Moore has called Trees Outside the Academy a more personal album, though there's nothing clearly confessional or diaristic about the disc's songs. The album's lyrical content is composed in Moore's trademark poetic absurdity, ranging from the subtly stunning to unrepentantly goofy. Many seem to have a love/hate relationship with Moore's lyrics in Sonic Youth, and the reaction here will likely be the same. Ever in touch with a youthful spirit than can contain an endearing twinge of awkwardness, Moore's singing clashes with the music more often here than it does in his work with Sonic Youth (though were his voice as smooth as velvet, this disc wouldn't be a Thurston Moore album). The meeting of Thurston's scratchy voice with the smooth violin of Lubelski is indicative of Trees Outside the Academy's showcase of a different side of Moore, something that, despite the guitarist's massive discography, hadn't yet come to light.

The album isn't a pivotal one in Moore's career, and it's obvious that by self-releasing the album on his own imprint, he's not aiming to make any sort of grandiose statement, but given the span of time before and between his solo albums (at least of this sort), Trees Outside the Academy can't help but arrive with a sense of anticipation beyond its modest manner. And while it's certain that some of the ever-burgeoning Sonic Youth fanbase will be disappointed by the disc, the album has already served its purpose. When Moore describes his motivations for recording the songs, he seems to intimate that even if the disc fails to move a single unit, Trees Outside the Academy will be, for him, a success.
(Adam Strohm)

[sonicl]

Boomkat record store review:

What is it that keeps Thurston Moore so interesting, relevant and cool? Maybe it's the fact that he keeps himself at the forefront of the music scene? Or maybe it's the fact that through numerous collaborations he manages to challenge himself and others by moving out of comfort zones he's set for himself over the last twenty-five years. Whatever it is, it confounds all expectations. Musicians are supposed to lose it after the first couple of albums, right? It should shock some people, then, that 'Trees Outside the Academy' ranks as one of Moore's most assured and finest recording efforts to date. It's not that Thurston has been quiet since his debut solo full-length 'Psychic Hearts' back in 1995, he's contributed to more records I could possibly cover, but the solo work has taken a back seat, probably to allow him to engineer such classics as last year's Sonic Youth masterpiece 'Rather Ripped' or the stunning double-whammy of Bark Haze releases on Important earlier this year. "Trees Outside The Academy" opens on a high and we're instantly introduced to the record's shimmering soul with 'Frozen Gtr', a track which begins with wailing strings (courtesy of the lovely Samara Lubelski) - with acoustic guitar, percussion (from Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley no less) and of course Moore's voice (which sounds cleaner and better than ever) added to the mix. He has surrounded himself with a very able crowd of collaborators, backing vocals come from Charalambides' Christina Carter, guitar solos from Dinosaur Jr. man J Mascis, Gown/Bark Haze feller Andrew McGregor pops up and there are even appearences from Sunburned Hand of the Man founder John Moloney and grrrl-noise pioneer Leslie Keffer. Well I'm exhausted already, but it's a credit to Moore that he harnesses this sprawling collection of unique talent and constructs an album as well realised and as listenable as you could ever have hoped for. I could go on about highlights all day (there really aren't any low points...) but one track I can't seem to take off repeat is the six minute epic 'Silver>Blue'. What starts as an acoustic rendition of early Sonic Youth (think Daydream Nation era) manages to transcend the comparison quickly and become its own beast, highlighting everything Moore is great at - memorable melodies, glorious harmonies, and that ever so slightly discordant heart. Lavished with some sparkling production and brought to life with Lubelski's violin work this has to rank as one of Moore's most accomplished compositions and is a centrepoint and balance for the record as a whole. Oddly enough, the record comes to a close with 'Thurston@13' a recording Moore discovered of himself at thirteen years old, experimenting on tape. Some people have to learn how to think musically, how to take risks and how to experiment, others are simply born with it. One of the albums of the year, no doubt, and something which in years to come is sure to be regarded as a classic - now how many records can you honestly say that about? Buy it.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=45116

[GrungeMonkey]

I now have it, and I love it. Just brilliant.

Frozen Guitar or Tress ouutside the academy are probably my favourites at the moment...

Anyone else think American Coffin sounds like Providence part 2?

[Moshe]

Reviewed by Andrew Earles
September 25th, 2007

"Fri/End" by Thurston Moore


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Trees Outside The Academy is Thurston Moore's first album since 1995's Psychic Hearts to feature wall-to-wall pop songs. Other than the distinct voice behind the mic, that's where the similarity ends. Any track from Psychic Hearts could have popped up on a mid-period album by Moore's full-time gig, Sonic Youth. This time, Moore turns inward and turns down, which works to his advantage. Where a bass would normally be, there's cello providing a second melody on top of Moore's vocals (see the gorgeous "Honest James" for the best example), and acoustic guitar is preferred over electric. One exception to the latter is J. Mascis' occasional leads (Trees was recorded at Mascis' Bisquiteen studio), though they hardly interfere with the album's soft mood.

A.V. Club Rating: A-

http://www.avclub.com/content/music/...club_rss_daily

[artsy wartsy]

does annyone know if trees will be released on vinyl?
cuz i've been searching for it n didn't find anything

[alyasa]

On a side note, I love your avatar, porky pig...

[plastic sun]

three words: amazing, amazing, amazing.

[PAULYBEE2656]

Originally Posted by plastic sun

three words: amazing, amazing, amazing.

fucking amazing!!!!

honest james is gorgeous song and wonderful witches is fun. great great album and its improving every time i hear it......