Fluxblog
September 26th, 2017 2:58am

Between The Window And The World


Lee Ranaldo “Morroccan Mountains”

Lee Ranaldo’s first two post-Sonic Youth solo albums are good but felt oddly ordinary, perhaps because I’d been waiting literally half of my life with the fantasy of hearing an all-Lee rock album. A lot of the songs on those records felt like Sonic Youth but without Kim or Thurston’s presence – that’s sort of exactly what they are, given that Steve Shelley is still his drummer – but the best tracks on the new Electric Trim have an ambitious prog-folk sound that feels like more of a clean break from SY aesthetics.

“Moroccan Mountains” sounds like the soundtrack to a journey, with Ranaldo’s voice like a sherpa guiding us as the song moves along an eccentric upward trajectory. I love Ranaldo’s tuning on this track – I’m not knowledgeable enough to identify it, but there’s a tinny sitar-like effect that’s crisp and bright, but slightly off-kilter. I’m also into the way the drama shifts between different passages, with some segments that are a bit ambiguous in tone moving seamlessly into others that are more overtly melancholy or aggressive. The drama peaks with a directly confrontational section that’s as close as this piece gets to traditional rock, but that’s about halfway through. The rest of it meanders into lovelier, more peaceful moments before reaching its conclusion.

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