All four Sonic Youth members are touring this fall — in three separate bands. The quartet hasn’t performed together since finishing a South American tour just after Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon split. The couple had been married for 27 years.
While the band has never formally announced they were breaking up, as recently as May it seemed that the pair wasn’t any closer to reconciling enough to play together again. Moore expressed anger over Gordon revealing details of their divorce to Elle, specifically that he was living a “double life” with another woman. And that brings us to this fall, when Moore, Gordon, guitarist Lee Ranaldo, and drummer Steve Shelley will hit the road, performing three separate bands.
As Slicing Up Eyeballs points out, Moore’s Chelsea Light Moving will play around the South in October and November, performing songs off their March-released self-titled debut. Gordon is about to release Coming Apart, the debut album from her improvisational guitar-noise duo Body/Head, on September 10 and will kick off a tour that night. And, proving that not everyone in the band is stewing in acrimony, Ranaldo and Shelley will tour in the guitarist’s new band, Lee Ranaldo and the Dust, beginning October 8. That group is expected to release a follow-up to Ranaldo’s excellent 2012 LP Between the Times and the Tides, sometime this fall via Matador.
Conviently enough, only one band will be on the road at a time, so there won’t be any awkard truck-stop run-ins. All tour dates below.
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Chelsea Light Moving tour dates:
October 27 – Carrboro, NC @ Local 506
October 28 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
October 30 – Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
October 31 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
November 1 – Talahassee, FL @ Club Downunder
November 2 – Tampa, FL @ Orpheum
November 4 – New Orleans, FL @ One Eyed Jacks
November 7 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
November 8-10 – Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Fest
November 11 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/Inn
November 13 – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar
Body/Head tour dates:
September 10 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
September 12 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
September 13 – San Diego, CA @ San Diego Music Thing
September 14 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
September 21 – Lexington, KY @ Boomslang Festival
September 24 – Chicago, IL @ Museum of Contemporary Art
September 25 – Detroit, MI @ Museum of Contemporary Art
October 2 – Augusta, GA @ Westobou Festival – Sacred Heart Cultural Center
Lee Ranaldo and The Dust tour dates:
October 8 – Hudson, NY @ Club Helsinki
October 9 – Buffalo, NY @ Tralf Music Hall
October 11 – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
October 12 – Detroit, MI @ Trinosophes
October 13 – Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
October 14 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
October 15 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Triple Rock
October 17 – Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s
October 18 – Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room (with Built to Spill)
October 19 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck (with Built to Spill)
October 20 – St. Louis, MO @ The Firebird (with Built to Spill)
October 22 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/Inn
October 23 – Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
October 25 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House
December 6 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
December 7 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
December 8 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza
December 11 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel
December 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
