Repose has never been part of Thurston Moore’s agenda. Since Sonic Youth disbanded in 2011, the seemingly ageless and tireless frontman has hardly let a few months pass without his name appearing on an album, one-off single or collaborative release. As a solo artist, he has dipped his feet into moody jangle (The Best Day), fused black metal with his best Neil Young-isms (Rock ‘n’ Roll Consciousness), retreated to the behemoth variations of Branca worship (Spirit Counsel), and even dropped a short LP of no wave acoustic meditations (screen time). On his latest, Flow Critical Lucidity, Moore carbonizes these excursions into a focused and hypnotic set of songs. 

As has become standard fare by now, he chooses his partners in crime wisely. Deb Googe of My Bloody Valentine fame is back helming the bass. The poet Radieux Radio also makes a comeback as Lucidity’s librettist. Their words continue walking that uneasy line between beatific, ecological, and arcane. Love, death, nature, a perished diver, Coral Morphologic, the human coral symbiosis movement, and Kali Yuga, the Hindu concept of a dark age that’s ushered in after Krishna’s death, all get a mention here. And in a stroke of chiming brilliance, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab is invited to harmonize on “Sans Limites,” the album’s finest tune. 

Through all of it, Moore’s avant-garde proclivities scratch their way to the surface of nearly every track here. Just listen to how the relatively standard post-punkish shuffle of “We Get High” gets regularly abraded by the low rumble of prepared guitar. Or how sharp-edged bass lends malaise to the otherwise-rapturous psychedelic procession of “The Diver.” With Flow Critical Lucidity, Thurston Moore places another superb album into his boundless catalogue.