Thurston Moore Band @ Woolly Mammoth, 07.12.2015

It’s a Monday night and the third day of Gigmas (having had the Sunday night off, although I’m sure I could have found a show to go to, especially given all the Meredith sideshows in town at the moment).

Gold Class are the single supporting act tonight and although I saw them on the Friday night, I would have liked to have caught them again, and perhaps gotten some better photos than a few days earlier.  They had an especially early start time of 7:45pm, and having been told to meet the promoter’s rep at 8:30pm, I didn’t get to Woolly Mammoth until after they’d finished playing.  The promoter’s rep was a no show so I probably could have come early and seen and photographed Gold Class again.

It’s that rarity of events in Brisbane, an early headline show, one that starts at 8:45pm and is all done by 10:15pm.  The Monday night probably explains why but it’s a refreshing change and there should be more of this playing at sensible times for people who have jobs to go to in the morning.  Woolly Mammoth is reasonably full for a Monday night and given it was $70 and he wasn’t going to play any Sonic Youth songs.

Truth be told and I’m a bit of a fair-weather Sonic Youth fan.  I think I always found them too clever for their own good, and for all the interesting sounding guitars, never felt that they had the songs to match.  I think they were always a bit too high art, too discordant for me.  I have a few of their albums and enjoy them enough from time-to-time without ever having become besotted by them, like so many of my peers, and have seen them numerous times at various festivals down the years, sometimes appearing to be better than other times.  When they’ve been good, they’ve been very good, but there’s often been an inconsistency to their shows.  Obviously the festival situation probably has had a major impact on this and I’ve never seen them play a headline show, and now probably never will.

Having said all that, this Thurston Moore show was really excellent, easily one of the best gigs in this week of madness. I can’t explain why it resonated so much when his previous band have often left me non-plussed.

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