Hardback, ebook and audiobook editions, alongside a special limited edition, will be published on 26 October 2023.

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.

Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music and 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, who would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana and Hole 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.

Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist, a tribute to an era of explosive creativity which birthed alternative rock and a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment. 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.