From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author's life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder "Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable." —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire. His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk. The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement, and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop. Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of music: the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible. In the spirit of Just Kids , Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity. It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form. This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life. A Vanity Fair Favorite Book of 2023 Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Fall by Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian "Both a herculean work of research and a love letter—to Moore’s youth, to underground rock, and to a band that formed in downtown Manhattan in 1981 and went on to change music forever... an exuberantly detailed account... Sonic Life is a big book and it feels like a whole life is poured into it." — Vogue “Electrifying… At its most evocative when describing the downtown music scene of the late 1970s and ’80s New York.” — Mark Yarm, The New York Times "An edgy valentine to ’80s punk... Few musicians have more indie rock credibility than Thurston Moore... Moore writes self-assuredly and aware but without conceit." —The San Francisco Chronicle "Vivid…  This memoir finds its room tone when [Moore] meets Kim Gordon… It’s a terrific love story….  He’s a good observer of other people, always a good sign in a memoirist… [An] excellent memoir.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "A rich and strange tableau of the music world . . . Sonic Life roars along with the runaway-freight-train passion of a true believer." -- The Wall Street Journal "Moore’s nightlife testimony becomes a memorial to the lost petri dish of a downtown scene that made Sonic Youth possible." -- The Washington Post "The tale of a record collector geek made good, a seeker after new sounds who in turn became a key architect of experimental rock in the two decades that followed. . . an engaging memory piece through a golden era of busted toilets and secondhand smoke that now seems as distant as Montparnasse in the 1920s." -- The Los Angeles Times "In taking readers along his musical trajectory—from idolizing the likes of Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, and Ron Asheton to sharing stages with them—Moore simultaneously charts rock’s decades-long evolution through punk and hardcore, new wave and no wave, indie and grunge." -- Vanity Fair "A microscopic look at how [Moore's] interests in punk, art, and guitar experimentalism fueled his contributions to one of alt-rock’s most daring bands. . . Moore’s memories of being a New York band on SST, the Year Punk Broke, and the horror he felt following Kurt Cobain’s death document turning points both in his life and in the evolution of underground rock with vivid detail." --Rolling Stone, Best Music Books of 2023 " Sonic Life is a deeply researched account of the music and culture that formed Moore’s persona as the godfather of the alt-rock movement." —Shondaland "[ Sonic Life ] is perhaps as subversive as Sonic Youth themselves were: the memoir of a well-read, thoughtful music fan, unsaddled by drugs 'n' drink, who came out the other side synapses intact. God bless him (and them) for that." — Clinton Heylin, Spectator (UK) "Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston M