Oh Thurston, why?

As a pretty big Sonic Youth fan, I always try and listen to everything Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label puts out. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s mind blowing amazing, but I just can’t get into this record.

I’ll admit, when I heard first single ‘Jesus Stole My Girlfriend’ I quite liked it. It’s a punchy track with a nostalgic slur of a chorus and I find the story behind it strangely charming. Apparently the band met playing in a Christian rock band and then jacked in religion to write songs with lots of swearing in. It was something like that anyway.

The production here does make Violent Soho sound like something struck down from the heavens with lightening force, but everything else falls a little short of the band’s godly influences. It may as well be 1993 again the amount of grungey rip offs.
But I don’t want to dwell on the negative. Instead, I’m going to think up some reasons why you might want Violent Soho in your record collection…

You’re making a US teen movie with University campus party scene.

Any track from this album would be the perfect soundtrack to that bit where the jeep pulls up in from of the frat house and six jocks jump out, red plastic cups in hand, and blaze past some babes into the party.

You want to really piss your parents off.

Turn this up really loud and wait for them to yell at you to turn it down. Then turn it up louder.

Throwing a 90s reunion party.

If you’re throwing an alt 90s party, slip this in between Nirvana and Pearl Jam and see if anyone notices. Then act smug when they don’t.

Making a mix-tape for the anti-religious.

What better way to tell the one you love that you never want to marry them than with a choice cut of anti-Jesus fuelled rage.

Writing a thesis on youthful rebellion and teen angst.

There’s a blow by blow account right here for as little as £7.99 on iTunes.

You enjoy doing things like this…

[audio clip]

Sorry Thurston. I still love you.