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Tom Carter Benefit: Chelsea Light Moving, Steve Gunn, White Out
285 Kent
Wednesday, September 12

Better than: Wishing this week's Sonic Youth communiqué was a tour announcement.

It's been almost a year since Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore called it quits. The split, of course, has stalled Sonic Youth—the band hasn't played since November of last year and, despite the impending release of an archival live album, has no plans to tour—but it's also freed up the individual members to hit harder with their own projects, which is exciting. Moore's latest band, Chelsea Light Moving, rolled into Brooklyn on Wednesday to play a benefit for Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter, a show that doubled as its New York debut. Like Sonic Youth, the group is dark and loud and noisy and blunt. Unlike that dormant rock juggernaut, Chelsea Light Moving is here and now, hungry and alive.

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Thurston Moore (left); John Zorn.

Thurston Moore/John Zorn Duo
St. Mark's Church
Friday, May 4

Better than: Bumming about MCA alone.

Free improvisation always has religious overtones—the major free-jazzers of the '60s acknowledged this with album titles like Ascension and Spiritual Unity—so there is hardly a better space to experience it in than a church. On Friday night at St. Mark's, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and saxophone-wielding downtown overlord John Zorn gathered congregants from rock and jazz circles to help them talk with the spirits. Outside in the East Village, NYU students and kids from New Jersey prowled the streets for a hookup; inside the more than two-century-old church, we testified.

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Murray Hill introduces the night's star attraction.

The Kathleen Hannah Project
The Knitting Factory
Saturday, December 12

Better than: Any actual battle of the bands that I've ever attended.

We are gathered here tonight at the Knitting Factory to praise Kathleen Hanna, not bury her. Though it's understandable if you get confused -- it's been a minute and half since we've heard from her. As a musician and feminist icon, Hanna's achievements, from the riot grrrl majesty of Bikini Kill to the body-moving dance beats of Le Tigre, are undeniable, but she's fallen largely silent for the past few years, apparently teaching at New York University and, most recently, earning a co-writing credit on Christina Aguilera's flop Bionic. Between her absence and the extended hiatus of Sleater-Kinney, it's been a tough couple years for lovers of feminist-charged anthems. Tonight, though, they'll all come roaring back.

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Today brings more confirmations for the three-day line-up of the Jim Jarmusch-curated All Tomorrow's Parties New York. Adding to the stellar list of Explosions in the Sky, Raekwon, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, Fucked Up, Girls, and the Stooges doing Raw Power are Shellac (credited in the press release as "House Band," which they more or less are), Hallogallo ("Michael Rother and Friends perform the Music of Neu!"), Text of Light (which includes Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo), and the Greenhornes.

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OK, we take it all back--this is cutest, most awesome free improv set ever. Just look at the tiny children tottering around, pressing buttons, turning knobs, and manhandling guitars! Some of them can't even properly stand up yet! The looming spectre of aging yuppie bad-parent hipsterism passed over this gathering like the angel of death over Israelite firstborns in Egypt and kept right on moving. If you have a child and did not avail yourself of this seminar, SOTC thinks you made a mistake. If only because you missed Thurston Moore's incredibly calm and even blasé demeanor in the midst of a bunch of eight-year-olds creating power electronic noise jams. Dude is officially unshockable--like, what would you have to do to throw him out of his comfort zone? Murder someone in front of him? Break a rare John Fahey record in half as he watched helplessly? [24Bit]

From Jim O'Rourke's All Kinds of People ~Love Burt Bacharach~ tribute album, out now in Japan. Thurston drew "Always Something There To Remind Me," which turns out to suit him real well. Real excited for Yoshimi's "I Say A Little Prayer" to surface but until then this will do nicely. [24Bit via Stereogum]

For the parents in the SOTC audience--are you a total scumbag if you take your kid to an hour-long dissertation on white noise by one of the founding members of Sonic Youth, or are you dad of the year? Does it matter that it's for charity? Is anyone in possession of an 8-year-old who would actually plausibly enjoy this? Or is this the kind of thing that will ultimately make your daughter a virulent Republican? Feel free to chime in here, people who know. We certainly don't. [PAPER]

Major Lazer with Skerrit Bwoy at Jelly's Carniville

Our resident ninja photog Rebecca Smeyne spent her time at South By Southwest exploring the festival's badgeless margins--the shows anybody with a little creativity and a lot of patience could attend. From the party for Death + Taxes Magazine where No Age and Japandroids played, to the Cinders Gallery installation at OK Mountain to a random show on a random porch, she managed to catch things even the rest of us who were there didn't experience. Her photos from Austin, which aren't quite like anything else we've seen from the festival, are below.

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Totally feeling the glam Jemina Pearl. Also the surly waitress Jemina Pearl, the lovestruck collagist Jemina Pearl, the backbooth brawler Jemina Pearl, and the kitchen saboteur Jemina Pearl. That's Thurston Moore there behind the counter, looking a lot like an exhausted old woman, and one doesn't even get the sense the makeup department had to get involved to pull the whole thing off. What up, Erik? [Stereogum]

--Oops. Not much came of Method Man allegedly shooting a fan in the face with an air gun, or a friend in the leg with a BB, but evading those $32,799 in income taxes over three years landed the Staten Island rapper at the 120 Police Precinct stationhouse this morning. "Taxes are the burden that all citizens share in a civil society, whether you are an 'average Joe' on the street or a high-profile rap artist," said the Staten Island District Attorney in a statement excoriating the rapper known in real life as Clifford Smith. "Because of the alleged action of people like Mr. Smith, law abiding citizens face higher taxes and reduced government services. Failure to properly report and pay your taxes is a crime against all citizens and will be aggressively investigated and prosecuted." To the tune of up to four years in prison, apparently. Get an accountant, Meth.

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