Demolished Thoughts is a sonically dense and fascinating album, but amongst the acoustic guitars, mandolins, strings and other unplugged instruments, Thurston Moore's voice was the element I thought of most on my first listen. Sonic Youth songs such as "The Diamond Sea" prove that he can carry a tune without being smothered in blankets of noise, but who would have thought he could carry an entire acoustic album? He has, of course, had three decades to find ways to work with his limited range, which is something producer Beck also knows a thing or two about. But really I think the reason I focused on Moore's voice the first time around was because I thought it was really going to have to deliver. It does, but as it turns out, that's just a bonus. Demolished Thoughts is no "sit around and let me tell you a story" collection of folk songs; Moore's thoughts are appropriately fragmented. The majority of the album's more than fifty minute running time is devoted to long instrumental passages. If Beck plus acoustic guitars plus strings leads you to expect Beck's production to recall that of Nigel Godrich on Beck's mostly acoustic albums Mutations (1998) and Sea Change (2002), you'd be right. Demolished Thoughts sounds a lot like those, minus the experimental flourishes; there's enough going on here that the instruments can speak for themselves.
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