Thurston Moore sure has been digging noise lately. The Sonic Youth guitarist has always been a fan of difficult sounds, but it seems that, as of late, the noise underground's the apple of his eye, as evidenced by his recent year-end list found in his semi-regular "Bull Tongue" column with Mr. Byron Coley. His top 26 is crammed with obscure noise vittles, and given how packed his cranium must be these days of such ear damage, it's no surprise that he's been getting into the fray. Once a near-constant improvisational partner of all manners of free music agitators of both wide and little renown, Moore has shifted focus in recent years, offering music seemingly more influenced, interestingly, by a generation of musicians on which Moore has had a profound impact. The guitarist is more likely these days to saddle up beside a youngster with an army of effects pedals than a free jazz legend with a saxophone, though it's likely any shift in his musical activities isn't so much a conscious move as much as it is simply Moore being draw in by what excites him. Either way, Sensitive/Lethal, Moore's debut recording for No Fun, finds the husband and father getting down and dirty all by his lonesome, but, as the title might infer, there's no major dichotomy within the disc's music.
Bookended by two longer tracks whose names constitute the disc's title, Sensitive/Lethal might seem the perfect arena for a showcase of Moore's Jekyl and Hyde, acoustic prettiness on one side, electric abuse on the other. "Sensitive" is built largely from acoustic guitar, but there's little very sensitive about the track, which builds thick walls around the acoustic strumming at its center. The sounds aren't gentle, but Moore opts for a layered attack rather than distinctly punishing sounds, creating a thick soup of feedback, drones, groans, and squeals under which the acoustic guitar trods on, quietly but insistently. It's only at the track's conclusion that Moore's acoustic seems to lose the battle, fading out beneath distorted remnants of the music's earlier heft.
"Lonesome," the short intermission between the disc's two titular pieces, isn't too shabby, but its sculptural feedback feels like a segue to "Lethal," which begins with ringing, distorted chords and a palpably darker tone. Moore's guitar is still a primary weapon, though it's augmented liberally with the purrs, squeals, and shrieks of electronics. The track makes use of a surprisingly hard stereo split, with much of the electronics in the left and guitar in the right, a move that can increase the music's disorienting effect, though, especially when the left channel's mostly a high, steady squeal, the division can feel distracting, an obstacle to the sound's potential to immerse. In a sense, the entire track deals with this problem; "Lethal," for all its noisy energy, tends to feel more obviously constructed than its predecessors. This isn't a death knell, of course, and the music doesn't feel overly forced or faked, but the track never quite takes hold the way it has the potential to, and these ears seemed inclined to keep the music at a distance rather than inviting it on in to rattle its inner realms.
Sensitive/Lethal proves that Thurston Moore's far from done finding ways to wrangle sound from his guitars, and that any fear of him relaxing as he ages is likely unfounded. The album's not going to scare most listeners as much as Moore did the young lady on the album's cover, but Thurston's still no stranger to aggressive sound, as evidenced here in spades. With his vast discography, this release might not signify one of Moore's absolute best, but it's a more than ample sign that he's in no way ready to let the kids have all the fun.
