The Best Day

Editors’ Notes With Sonic Youth on indefinite hiatus and Thurston Moore’s marriage to Kim Gordon dissolved, Moore now fulfills his musical obsessions in a new band with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, My Bloody Valentine bassist Deb Googe, and guitar virtuoso James Sedwards performing as a well-oiled collective. The songs are conventional by Moore’s standards, capable of being sung and hummed like Goo or Dirty-era SY. However, the path to accessibility still requires unorthodox guitar tunings and complex droning (“Vocabularies,” “Grace Lake”), and Moore’s punk roots are in clear evidence throughout (“Detonation”).