Lee Ranaldo – Between the Times and the Tides

And so it begins. With Sonic Youth all but over following Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s separation – a move that has rid the indie community of any residual faith it might have had in the institution of marriage – the four members of what once seemed to be an indestructible rock and roll machine are off on their own, finding ways to excite the ears of the world without the help of the partners in crime they’ve had since the late ’70s. Thurston’s touring of the genuinely lovely acoustic LP Demolished Thoughts continues into another year, Kim has started gracing covers of fashion magazines and playing improvisational shows in trendy East London cafes, and Steve Shelley now drums full time for the pretty-good Chicago garage rockers Disappears. Then, there’s Lee Ranaldo.

Of course, just like the rest of them, Ranaldo has been releasing all kinds of collaborative, experimental and sometimes just plain mental work all the while Sonic Youth have been going on. But there’s something different about Between the Times and the Tides. Whereas previous solo records bearing his name have taken the form of spoken-word pieces or melody-free journeys in to the depths of feedback, this – his first release on Matador Records – is full of songs. Proper songs, with beginnings, middles, ends, riffs, choruses – you know the sort. When you’re Lee Ranaldo, making a really normal kind of record is one of the most curious career paths you could have gone down.

But there’s very little that’s odd about Between the Times and the Tides – other than the few songs that sound a bit like mid noughties R.E.M. (shudder). Thankfully, there aren’t many of those, and the moments where Ranaldo channels his old hero Neil Young, as opposed to Michael Stipe mid-rut, border on the brilliant. Among the highlights are opener ‘Waiting On A Dream’, which would be an excellent Lee contribution to any Sonic Youth record, ‘Hammer Blows’ which show a wonderfully gentle, John Fahey-indebted acoustic side that we can only hope he investigates further, and ‘Fire Island’, on which he wails like Crazy Horse at their blissed-out peak. Stealing the show however is seven minute behemoth ‘Xtina As I Knew Her’, an astonishing mix of his trademark spoken word wizardry (“As Christina came of age I hung with Christina’s friends, they would all come ‘round the house and slowly go insane”) with a chorus to die for and a carpet of guitars that both rumble like an underground train and twinkle like stars. It’s bloody fantastic.

Other bits, though, aren’t. ‘Off The Wall’’s sugary female backing vocals and unusually clichéd lyrics (“See me as I am, just half a man trying to get home” – eugh, right?) make it the album’s first track that’ll have you hovering over the skip button; and the LP’s lacklustre closing third contains too many mid-tempo numbers like ‘Shouts’, which essentially just sounds like the first part of the record but with all the momentum sucked out of it (and a bit like mid noughties R.E.M.). Sonic Youth always shone brightest when the gap between their experimental tendencies and their way with a pop hook was as small as possible. And whilst there’s a lot to love about Between the Tides and the Times, it seems that’s something that applies to Lee Ranaldo’s solo work too.