Critical critique

End-of-year-list season always brings welcome nudges/reminders to check out albums that have, for one reason or another, passed me by. And so it was that I finally got around to listening to Thurston Moore's latest.

I take no pleasure in what I'm about to say - the exact opposite, in fact, as a long-time Moore fanboy who has lapped up his post-Sonic Youth solo work almost as eagerly as his former band's output. But Flow Critical Lucidity is lame: pallid, unadventurous, unexciting. Harsh, perhaps, but it sounds like the work of someone who may - finally - be creatively spent. And I think we also have to grasp the nettle and acknowledge that he seems to have become the kind of drippy hippie his former self would have despised.

It's probably unfair on both parties, but I can't help but compare the album to Kim Gordon's The Collective, also released this year. The latter is not exactly an easy record to love, for SY fans like myself taken way out of our comfort zone - or at least not instantly. But there's no doubting it's bold and cutting edge - both attributes that could hardly be ascribed to the dreary, zero-thrills Flow Critical Lucidity.

Here's hoping, of course, that this is merely a temporary blip and that Moore soon rediscovers his mojo. In the meantime, I guess it just goes to show that even your heroes can let you down sometimes.