Thurston Moore Group

London Camden The Powerhaus

Sonic Youth guitarist burns bright with current band.

To close one’s eyes during the rising and extended drone that is Venus at the close of this remarkable performance is to enter a world of transcendent beauty. As the lights strafe and flicker to create stunning views via closed-eye hallucinations, the interaction between Thurston Moore, guitarist James Sedwards, bassist Deb Googe, drummer

Jem Doulton and Jon Leidecker’s electronic embellishments weave a divine sound that banishes the ill thoughts of the Powerhaus’s overpriced bar.

The intertwining of the guitar styles on display are an utter joy as Sedwards’s classic soloing coalesces seamlessly with Moore’s alternative tunings and sonic explorations. Witness the chugging Cantaloupe that at once embraces a rock’n’roll approach with a questing sensibility, an aesthetic that is repeated to full effect with the intoxicating swirl of Hashish.

Moore’s primordial influences come to the fore with a stunning reading of the Velvet Underground’s Temptation Inside Your Heart that gives some idea as to what his forebears might have sounded like in 1966. But it’s the groove from the engine room of Googe and Doulton that root the songs in a firm footing and allows the six-string flights of fancy to truly hit home.

“We’re thinking of calling ourselves Easy Peasy,” Moore quips. But that’s way too much of a misnomer for music as powerful, inventive and sublime as this.