He’s not the conceptualist/star — that’s bassist Kim Gordon. Nor is the member with the boho bonafides — award those to Lee Ranaldo. But as front man, publicist, and blessed with a tune sense that Sonic Youth’s early albums did their best to obscure in dissonance, Thurston Moore is the person whom listeners associate with Sonic Youth. 1995’s Psychic Hearts and 2011’s Beck-produced Demolished Thoughts are conventionally odd solo albums in the Tom Verlaine tradition.
Since the news that the most revered of indie rock marriages dissolved because of his infidelity, Moore’s reputation has crumbled, but his work ethic is too severe to acquiesce to the diminishing returns of predictably solid solo albums, and he wrote “Self-Obsessed and Sexxee” because he believed in a mythology about himself.
I could’ve awarded him more songs below, but I wanted to be fair to Ranaldo and Gordon.
1. “Expressway to Yr. Skull” (EVOL)
2. “Teenage Riot” (Daydream Nation)
3. “Theresa’s Sound-World” (Dirty)
4. “Incinerate” (Rather Ripped)
5. “Death Valley ’69” featuring Lydia Lunch (Bad Moon Rising)
6. “Youth Against Fascism” (Dirty)
7. “Hits of Sunshine” (A Thousand Leaves)
8. “Silver Rocket” (Daydream Nation)
9. “Disappearer” (Goo)
10. “Self-Obsessed and Sexxee” (Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star)
11. “Pink Steam” (Rather Ripped)
12. “Purr” (Dirty)
13. “Schizophrenia” (Sister)
14. (She’s In a) Bad Mood” (Confusion is Sex)
15. “Rain on Tin” (Murray Street)
16. “Peace Attack” (Sonic Nurse)
Humanizing The Vacuum 