Lee Ranaldo
Between The Times & The Tides

As a rule, when a planet explodes it's a terrible mess. Shards wandering across the cosmos planting themselves on some little planet inhabited by peaceful and quiet communities that end up meeting a bad end (forgive me the pun, eh).

From the explosion (or implosion let's say) of the planet Sonic Youth no collateral effect arose. At most, the pieces that broke off gave life to something much more beautiful than what the planet had to offer in its entirety. 

It's sad to admit it, eh, but when the "youth" ended, the quartet's "sonicity" had gone to the dogs. And perhaps the separation of the (once) Moore spouses was just an excuse to put an end to it. The years go by, indeed, and youth doesn't last forever, and the first in line to "pay" for it was Thurston himself with his latest solo album in which the only trace of youth is the photos of the (once) young prince of musical indie(pendence). Some call it maturity, others fatigue, some others change, and yet others great albums. In the end (or the beginning, time will tell this, as always) even dear Lee Ranaldo discovers that at 56 it's also nice to toss whistles and reverb out the window, or maybe put them in a drawer, and come to terms with those white hairs he sees on his head while looking in the mirror. To ensure that those feelings of maturity/fatigue/change turned into a great album, he decided to call upon people who had lived the youthfulness with him for better or worse. And in come Nels Cline, John Medeski, Jim O'Rourke, Steve Shelley, and Bob Bert (I know there are other people but gentlemen, I know you want the NAMES, here they are, I'm a flatterer). After gathering them in the studio, dear Ranaldo explained to them that he is in love with the work that Mr. O'Rourke and Mr. Cline have done/do with certain Wilco, who seem to never have encountered youth, and they set themselves to recording and composing the aforementioned maturity.

"Between The Times & The Tides" in fact is precisely this: a jewel of awareness and melody. Wandering around my sad city, in excitement for the arrival of masterpiece paintings that my fellow citizens will mistake for dirty tablecloths, I find myself face to face with flashes of Lennonianity drowning in rock symptoms from R.E.M. phase, melodic openings that brush the sky and keyboard counterpoints of the (not) color of clouds (if you open the album with two songs like "Waiting On A Dream" and "Off The Wall" you are already halfway through, famous New York saying), and with splendid guitar openings, where the notes draw women's faces in the air, and the pop melody that more maturemagnificentpop you cannot sticks in your head (which in the end is not really pop, if the track lasts 7 minutes) in which the vocal mask of Michael Stipe doesn't fall, but expands the possibilities of flying ("Xtina As I Knew Her" "hides" even lyrics of unique beauty because Xtina "was a lonely soldier[...]frozen in time", and thus becomes my favorite piece). In his journey towards the "new" Ranaldo meets the sounds of his counterpart Moore in the acoustic nooks of "Hammer Blows" where there are only a microphone and a guitar to draw the path (and at some point of the noise dirtyguitaristic in the background), and which at the first vocal note makes the bespectacled Micah P. Hinson cross my mind. And let's pretend to believe that "Fire Island (Phases)" is an indie track pulled like its intro, even when it breaks into a mid-tempo still indie and basks in alt-country sobs, mind you, (who said Wilco again?? I heard you). 

Looking up at the sky I wonder what will be the next shard from which next exploded/imploded planet will crash into my ears. Will it be the missing his lady with the BlackFlagged earring, Kim Gordon? Or maybe that’s a fragment that will always wander in the memory of when her bass was the dirtiest of all?

We await.