Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy

As Sonic Youth's endlessly creative lead guitarist and grungey, disaffected singer, Thurston Moore's alternative/indie street-cred wouldn't show a scratch if his first proper solo album in 12 years was an album of B*witched covers. Luckily, Trees Outside The Academy doesn't take such chances, roping in J Mascis for guitar help and then sounding entirely as you'd expect it to sound – like Sonic Youth meets Dinosaur Jr, but not as good as either at their best. To his great credit, Moore can move from gently driving, taunting acoustic guitar pieces, to lo-fi free-form piano, and again to raucous punk posturing, without losing the thread. With guitars and violins at times studied and serious like straight college rock, and at others screeching and yelling like the most abrasive of tantrums - Thurston Moore may be 49, but he'll always be a teenager at heart. [Ally Brown]