Almost two years after Occupy Wall Street, Thurston Moore is encouraging more active dissent. “Get fucking mad / Too fucking bad,” the Sonic Youth singer-guitarist sneers on “Lip,” a blistering art-punk track from his current band Chelsea Light Moving’s excellent new self-titled album. The song’s video, directed by Eva Prinz at Ecstatic Peace Library and posted today, intersperses performance footage with footage from both Occupy and the 2011 London riots.
In a new Rolling Stone interview, Moore said “Lip” is a “protest song” he wrote for everyone he knows involved with Occupy. “When I went down there, there was so much celebration and theater going on, and I really responded to that,” he’s quoted as saying. “You’d go down and there was poetry being read and a library being built and an ad hoc parade would go around.”
What Moore didn’t discuss was the future of Sonic Youth or the status of his split from wife and bandmate Kim Gordon. “Personal issues are not something I talk about,” he insisted regarding Gordon. Later, he also declined to comment on an interview where Gordon said he conducted an extramarital affair right before she underwent treatment for breast cancer.
As for Sonic Youth, Moore was suitably vague: “If Sonic Youth ever plays again, that will be Sonic Youth, obviously.” Indeed.
