Lee Ranaldo (Photo by Allex Rademakers)
Sonic Youth means something specific. It's a marker of sorts, driven into rock's substrata even if most folks would be hard-pressed to name a track by the band that Richard Edson, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo founded in 1981.
Over a 30-year stretch with the band, Ranaldo and his cohorts developed a collective rhythm. The guitarist hasn't shed what he learned from all that time in Sonic Youth, but a pair of his solo albums serve as a public musical pivot, both lyrically and instrumentally.
“With Sonic Youth, it was a communal process. Writing songs on your own and making records under my own name, I think about it in terms of how a film director works,” says Ranaldo, who's been releasing solo work since 1987, mostly skirting anything that abuts traditional songcraft. “You're making the decisions, not sharing the decisions. Even though I'm taking input from my band and whoever's playing on my record, the final judgment comes down to what I want it to be.”
It didn't take him decades to develop the singer-songwriter mode of composition he's engaged on those two discs — 2012's “Between the Times and the Tides” and 2013’s “Last Night on Earth.” Ranaldo's voice was sublimated to what Sonic Youth's intentions had become. It enabled international recognition, but not amazing remuneration.
“We've never had a gold record,” Ranaldo says about a troupe he'll be associated with for the rest of his career.
Recognition of that kind, though, is almost in opposition to the cerebral guitar fuzz Sonic Youth trucked in. With or without precious sales, Ranaldo's accumulated habits from working with that handful of friends for decades hasn't been totally abandoned during his post-SY life. “Between the Times and the Tides,” his first solo disc, whirs with overdriven distortion at points.
But Ranaldo's recent solo work begins where SY left off (the group disbanded in 2011 when Gordon and Moore, who married early in the ’80s, split). For the guitarist's second solo offering, that signature, scuzzy New York vibe is significantly less apparent.
Says Ranaldo, “I've got a couple [albums] under my belt. Figuring out my voice isn't pertaining to singing as much, but what I want to present. It's just kind of evolved. I'm kind of happy to have the opportunity this way.”
A third post-SY disc from Ranaldo is due out in September, he promises. And “Electric Trim” sports a bevy of electronics and samples, in part spurred on by collaboration with Raul Fernandez, a Spanish producer and musician Ranaldo met on tour.
It could be construed that his work now begins to shuttle farther away from his previous decades of recording. But Sonic Youth is too sturdy a construct for it to be obliterated from the guitarist's life.
“You could say someone like Iggy did it or someone like Lou Reed,” Ranaldo says, touching on performers who went on to notable success after being a part of a singular ensemble. “But Iggy's going to be talked about in terms of the Stooges and Lou with the Velvets. I don't expect that anything will, for the four of us, become as significant in our bio as Sonic Youth. We had an amazing run.”
Since the split, Ranaldo's been better able to engage larger ensembles and orchestral ideas, as well as the acoustic stuff bringing him to town June 13 on a bill with Steve Gunn and Meg Baird, who in the past performed with Heron Oblivion and Espers.
Each player has a unique relationship with the singer-songwriter medium and insinuates a swath of Fahey, English folk balladry or flat-picking simplicity into performances. So, while a night of acoustic guitar and folksy songs initially might sound stodgy, Ranaldo is invigorated by the diversity of the music to be presented. And there's still some exploration to be done for the 61-year-old guitarist and songwriter.
“This period is just time for me to experiment in different ways,” he says. “And in a way, doing solo acoustic guitar is the most experimental thing I do, because it's just so atypical for me. I'm not a guy who's always played acoustic concerts — I'm not a Jeff Tweedy kind of guy.”
Lee Ranaldo headlines at The Broadberry June 13 at 8 p.m. 804-353-1888 or thebroadberry.com
