Like many valuable artists,
Yoko Ono has long been a polarizing force, equally famous and controversial in circles of art and music.
YOKOKIMTHURSTON is a collaborative effort between
Ono and two of
Sonic Youth's lead creative forces,
Kim Gordon and
Thurston Moore. Though the trio worked together before this album, it marks the continuation of
Gordon and
Moore's creative work together following the end of their 27-year-long marriage earlier in 2012. The six pieces on
YOKOKIMTHURSTON are almost all extended meditations, but they seek out different realms of the avant-garde spectrum to inhabit. Tracks like "I Missed You Listening" and "Let's Get There" blend the dark guitar noise experimentation of the
Sonic Youth contributors with
Ono's tortured vocalizations. "Running the Risk" begins with a spoken word poetry collage from the voices of all three performers, eventually introducing caustic clean guitar sounds as
Ono continues to offer Fluxus-styled word fragments and wordless vocal noises, eventually joined by
Gordon. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding throughout most of the album's tracks. The trio explores the cross section of minimal guitar ambience, vocal improvisation, and poetry on "I Never Told You, Did I?," ending up in a badlands somewhere between the Halloween-themed moodiness of
Sonic Youth's
Bad Moon Rising and
Ono's work on albums like Fly. The mood is loose and improvisatory for most of the set, and offers less to latch on sonically than it does a tense but somehow reassuring mood. The album's strongest point comes in "Mirror Mirror," as
Fahey-esque acoustic guitar drones provide a pastoral backdrop for
Ono's letter to herself and
Gordon's reverberated grunts. The dark sprawl of "Early in the Morning" recalls ESP-Disk artist
Patty Waters' extended and horrified take on "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" with
Ono's pained syllables being dragged over
Moore's damaged guitar scratches. The pieces are unquestionably noisy avant-garde excursions into raw sound, and thusly won't appeal to even most
Sonic Youth fans, but those fans are used to this kind of atonal sidetracking from the band. This type of collaboration runs the risk of very quickly becoming an excuse for like-minded peers to hang out and jam slightly, but
YOKOKIMTHURSTON feels more focused and risk-taking than some weekend distraction between friends.
Sonic Youth have never shied away from releasing indulgent noise jams in the name of art for art's sake, but this album ranks above the best of their non-rock experimentation, and adds a new dimension, with both
Gordon and
Moore stepping back to serve as supporting noisemakers for
Ono's one-of-a-kind voice. ~ Fred Thomas