Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo puts out his first proper, song-oriented studio album this March. Recorded with longstanding Sonic Youth producer John Agnello, the album is a shimmering and melodic tapestry of rock sounds.

Ranaldo’s trademark alternate-tuning guitar work is at the forefront, but it is amplified by brilliant leadwork from Wilco’s Nels Cline on every track.

The all-star line up also includes Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums, Alan Licht on guitar, and John Medeski on keyboards.

There are also cameos from original Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert and producer and instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke.

‘Between The Times And The Tides’ is equal parts smart, confident and loose in a manner that recalls some of our favourite rock ‘n’ roll projects …yet sounds like a fantastic new band that was apparently being assembled right under our noses.

With lyrics plumbing Ranaldo’s childhood and adolescence, it’s a fascinatingly approachable song collection from one of rock’s greatest guitarists.

“Sonic Youth’s Dark Horse finally emerges into a role that plenty of SY fans wish he’d embraced earlier. '60s and ‘70s Los Angeles rock is a fine reference point for Ranaldo's music, even with the chiming guitars that are strictly New York” - Village Voice

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: I know what you're thinking - a Lee Ranaldo solo album, experimental and difficult - but you couldn't be further from the truth. ‘Between The Times And The Tides’ is packed full of melodic gems, with angular chiming guitars aplenty, as you'd expect from the Sonic Youth man. Highly recommended!

Kurt Vile has a way of tying time in knots. You can hear it on his new album "Smoke Ring For My Halo" from the get-go – the pinwheeling guitars and reaching atmospheres of "Baby’s Arms" are as strange as they are familiar: a demonstration of how Kurt can put worn methods and sounds through himself and end up with something that isn’t emotionally or sonically obvious. Instead we’re left with a record that contains traces of the past but doesn’t waste precious time in the now being reverent.

Once compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Psychic TV and Animal Collective in the same review, Kurt can bring to mind anything from Suicide to Leo Kottke to My Bloody Valentine, Bob Seger, Nick Drake and Eastern ragas. Still, he pieces together these disparate elements so seamlessly and unpretentiously that such reference points are rendered pointless by the singularity of his sound. Kurt Vile might belong to a long lineage of classic American songwriters, but he’s the only one who’s alive and in his prime today.

This is the fourth time Kurt Vile has put an album’s worth of songs together and stuck a name on it, but in a sense "Smoke Ring For My Halo" is his first real album - every flinching guitar arpeggio and vocal wander was made to be here, made with this record in mind, to sit alongside another in situ and in sequence. It’s a record that is perfect for any given day during whatever season, to satisfy all moods in every possible scenario, be that first thing in the morning or last thing at night; today, tomorrow or five years from now.

TRACK LISTING

1. Baby’s Arms
2. Jesus Fever
3. Puppet To The Man
4. On Tour
5. Society Is My Friend
6. Runner Ups
7. In My Time
8. Peeping Tomboy
9. Smoke Ring For My Halo
10. Ghost Town

In between his two albums, Jay Reatard has released two compilations of 7" singles for In The Red and Matador respectively (both 2008) and has also been busy with his own Shattered Records label (home to acts like Box Elders, Useless Eaters, Jeffrey Novak and Hunx). When people call him prodigious, they might be underselling him somewhat. For his second studio album, "Watch Me Fall", Jay has moved beyond his roots and recorded an album chockful of irresistible melodies and cascading with joyous hooks. He would not be Jay Reatard, however, if there wasn't a certain aggro negativity, and the song titles and lyrics do much to undercut the pop sensibility: "I'm Watching You", "Hang Them All", "Can't Do It Anymore", "Wounded" and "It Ain't Gonna Save Me", amongst others.

Interpol's lead singer, lyricist and guitarist Paul Banks releases his debut solo album under the name Julian Plenti. Julian Plenti began composing music in 1996 in New York City. He first played solo acoustic shows in and around Manhattan, at venues like Tobacco Road, Pete's Candy Store, The Knitting Factory, The Living Room, and the Sidewalk Cafe's Wednesday Night Anti-hoot with Latch. In 2001, he stopped performing, though he continued writing and doing occasional engineering work, he essentially went on sabbatical until 2006 when he acquired Logic Pro, which allowed him to compose for multiple instruments and to create beats. The first step was to resurrect early acoustic work such as "Girl On The Sporting News", "On The Esplanade", "Fly As You Might" and "Fun That We Have" and to refurbish them with beats and string arrangements. The resulting recordings bred newer enthusiasms and were the catalyst for this record. "Skyscraper" was born. In the fall of 2008, Plenti went to the Seaside Lounge Studio in Brooklyn to work with studio co-owner and engineer - and college classmate - Charles Burst (former drummer of The Occasion and now a solo artist). Burst engineered much of the record and plays drums on a number of tracks. Session musicians were hired to perform the arrangements for strings and horns, and Plenti called on friends like Mike Stroud of Ratatat, Sam Fogarino of Interpol and Striker Manley of Stiff Jesus to contribute to tracks on the album.

"The Eternal" is a supercharged rocker, recalling aspects of the "Evol", "Sister" and "Daydream Nation" holy trinity but with cleaner, louder production and more straightforward momentum. With Pavement's Mark Ibold joining on bass, and producer John Agnello back at the controls, "The Eternal" takes the melodic songwriting of 2006's "Rather Ripped" and slams down the accelerator pedal. Produced by John Agnello and the band, "The Eternal" not only marks Sonic Youth's return to the independent label sphere (titles on their own SYR label excepted) after a long association with Geffen, but more importantly, ranks as one of their more inspired efforts in a 28 year career. Of "The Eternal", Matador's Gerard Cosloy says, 'We've not had a record in our recent history that's been the subject of nearly as much speculation and anticipation. Suffice to say we're pretty amazed at the way the band delivered something this neoteric while still sounding like, well, themselves. Less of a reinvention and perhaps more to do with a particularly awesome dozen songs.'

Here is Thurston Moore's take on the songs:
Sacred Trickster (2:10)
Out-of-the gate hardcore matinee track with Kim singing salutes to French painter Yves Klein and Western Massachusetts noise artist Noise Nomads.
Anti-Orgasm (6:08)
Inspired by the story of Berlin 60s model/activist Uschi Obermeier and the gang at Kommune 1. Free love, dominance and submission, and other political states-of-confusion.
Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso) (3:32)
The NYC beat poet Gregory Corso once referred life on Earth as a leaky lifeboat. This tune expounds on this rumination.
Antenna (6:13)
Melodious ode to fleeting fantasy and unresolved desire with the sound of two analogue radios communicating the emotional action.
What We Know (3:54)
Charging forth with a riff in reference to Sonics Rendezvous Band, Lee sings a triptych to identity and unity.
Calming The Snake (3:35)
One of the first tracks written, musical references to the Dead C, the MC5 and Neu. Kim musing on visions of Death in painting.
Poison Arrow (3:43)
Dedicated to the lust groove of Kevin Ayers where thoughts of love as pretty poison rejoice in surrealist deliverance.
Malibu Gas Station (5:39)
An ode to the flash moment of the camera as you knowingly step from your SUV sans panties.
Thunderclap For Bobby Pyn (2:38)
Flashing back to a wishful existence in the original Masque basement on N. Cherokee in Hollywood, crashing through lawns and garbage cans en route to the Canterbury/Disgraceland to jump up and down on beds with Helen Killer, Mary Rat and Trudi.
No Way (3:52)
First song written for the album, with a nod to The Wipers of Portland, Oregon. A confrontation with the devil in his guise of temptation and staking a distinct place amongst the black legions.
Walkin Blue (5:20)
Lee with his arm around yr shoulder, getting you through a seemingly impenetrable day of dread to a clear vision towards sweet foreverness.
Massage The History (9:41)
The long way home, where blood rules the universe and time becomes myth.

"Challengers" continues The New Pornographer's signature multi-layered sound with greater epic sweep and wider sonic diversity. Less frenetically jaunty than its predecessors but still encapsulating pure summer joy, this album will impress the existing fans and convert the uninitiated. Recorded for the first time largely outside bassist John Collins' Vancouver JC/DC Studio, "Challengers" is their most organic-sounding record, reflecting a conscious decision to use less 'beepy synth' and almost entirely 'real' instruments (in addition to those listed above, they recruited an entire string section – who have played with Sufjan Stevens - plus harp, flute, and more).

Originally released in 1998, this 180g vinyl edition is remastered from the original tapes and includes a free download of the album.

The album was recorded in the rural tranquility of Idyllwild, California, in a room with large windows looking out onto the surrounding nature. Nabob and Rabob gathered their friends to record one of the most unique and mesmerising albums of the year. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Released back in 2006 and creating psyched-out folk with a heavy dose of soul, Brightblack Morning Light blurs the edges of consciousness and transports you to another plane.

Once again moving the bar for 'what can be done in just one record', no two songs sound the same. There's everything from epic soundscapes to jaunty popsongs, to gorgeous love songs with a few rock'n'roll numbers thrown in. All delivered with humour, a smattering of falsetto and a huge dose of that unique Yo La Tengo charm.

The new record by San Francisco duo Matmos. It is a series of 'sound portraits' of a pantheon of people that they admire; a musical attempt at biography. "The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast" is loose in some places and very literal in others; taken as a suite of stylistically disparate songs, you get a kind of fractured family album, a historical pageant. It is at once Matmos' most melodic and most conceptual record. Matmos read the biographies and re-enacted events from their subjects' lives, making songs out of the sounds of the re-enactments. They gathered objects that were important to these people, made noises with them, and built melodies out of the noises, sometimes with just a tight focus on one detail and sometimes they revisit one event from their life. Sometimes they depict their subject abstractly. French horns, tuba, strings, harp, darbuka, voice, guitar, drums and synths are chopped into tricky rhythmic patterns and melodic motifs. It's a funkier, funnier affair than their last album, "The Civil War", but also a darker one.

"Prisoners Of Love" is a sprawling, enthralling summation of the career-to-date (as of 2005) of Yo La Tengo. The CDs cram together previously released highlights from YLT's pre-Matador tenure, along with the most sizzling moments from their second decade in show biz.

Recorded with longtime associate Peter Katis, "Antics" is an optimistic exploration of the dark landscapes visited on Interpol's hugely successful debut "Turn On The Bright Lights". Some of Interpol's greatest songs are here: "Evil", "Take You On A Cruise", "Slow Hands" and "Not Even Jail" among them.