Matador

It’s consistently amazing how many oddball moods Thurston Moore can wrench from an electric guitar. His latest “rawk” unit Chelsea Light Moving bears only a passing resemblance to Sonic Youth – songs like “Sleeping Where I Fall” and “Empires Of Time,” in all their raggedy splendor, revive a glam-rock snarl circa early ‘72 – but then, restless movement and unpredictability are the M.O. here. With guitarist Keith Wood, bassist Samara Lubelski and drummer John Moloney onboard, CLM is a noisy juggernaut that somehow captures all the grit, grime and wild experimentation of a bygone era, without ever sounding jaded, derivative or formulaic. As if to hammer the point home, Moore throws himself into the brutally sardonic junkie romp “Burroughs” ( “Hey Billy, what’s your cure for pain?” ) and sounds like a kid again on “Communist Eyes,” a Germs cover that comes perilously close to raising the ghost of Darby Crash (who’s name-checked in the spoken-word dirge “Mohawk” ). Is Moore smirking his way through it all, like a guy who knows how absurd it is to make a balls-out art-punk record at age 54? Absolutely, and that’s why it works from top to bottom.