Photo credit: Natalia Mantini

Kim Gordon’s No Home Record is a tough, sexy album and it sounds exactly like what you’d expect from her solo debut, after three decades spent in her former band, Sonic Youth.

Often dissonant, occasionally menacing, and never boring, Gordon’s new album provides squalls of guitar along with her icy cool vocals. She works up a drum machine on a pair of tunes and bass on another. The minimalist, jagged soundscape leaves plenty of space and creates different moods, mostly dark. Her impressionistic lyrics leave a lot of room for interpretation about the nature of art, capitalism, and consumerism.

No Home Record and Gordon’s visual art were two subjects that came up in a quick phone chat I had with her just after the album’s release.

Hear the chat here.

As a founding member of Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo etched his name into the canon of New York rock artists during his 30-year tenure with the group, from 1981 to 2011.

His inventive guitar playing, built upon unusual tunings, sprung from the city’s downtown experimental ‘No Wave’ scene and had a profound, far-reaching impact. The Long Island-bred, SUNY Binghamton-educated Ranaldo was a veteran of the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca when he co-founded Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. With his bandmates, he expanded the vocabulary of rock and emanated a unique brand of New York cool that has aged like fine whiskey.

Ranaldo began recording as a solo artist in 1987 with From Here to Infinity, and has been especially active since becoming a free agent. The Times and the Tides was issued in 2012, followed by Last Night on Earth, co-credited to his band The Dust (along with its companion, Acoustic Dust).

This chat came upon the release of Electric Trim, featuring songs he hatched with Barcelona musician/producer Raül Refree. Nels Cline, Sharon Van Etten, and his old bandmate Steve Shelley. In addition to hearing the fascinating way he made the new album, he spoke about Sonic Youth including how New York was truly imprinted on the early records and how Goo and Dirty answered the question ‘ What would Sonic Youth music sound like if you threw a hundred thousand at a record instead of twenty or thirty.’

Too hear the interview and see Lee Ranaldo perform two songs from Electrim Trim at WFUV studios, click here.

Record Store Day…What an excellent idea!  It’s not only really just become a thing.  It’s really just become a great thing!  Record Store Day 2015 is this Saturday, April 18.  As a guy who worked at Second Coming Records (the one between Harvard Square & Central Square in Cambridge, MA as opposed to the one in the West Village; both are closed) as well as the also now defunct Rainbow Books and Records in Honolulu… I can testify that some of life’s best conversations and encounters – not to mention acquisitions – happen at independent retailers of wax.  I had a very enjoyable chat with one of the guys who invented Record Store Day, Michael Kurtz, who gives a sense of the history and takes a look at a few of the titles that’ll be unleashed.  A word from this year’s ambassador Dave Grohl too…

Cool event last night at the intimate Marlin Room (capacity 500) at Webster Hall with Thurston Moore.

It was a free show presented by Norton Antivirus and Pandora that you had to RSVP for and it featured an open bar – really!  The former Sonic Youth guitarist/singer is now living in London and is doing shows supporting the album he put out earlier this year called The Best Day.  The album was recorded with a neighbor in his new town – James Sedwards on second guitar, another Brit – Deb Googe on bass, known for her work in My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream and, his old pal from the Sonics – Steve Shelley on drums.  All were present last night with the exception of Shelley.  The album follows last year’s self-titled effort by Chelsea Light Moving, the first band Thurston Moore formed after the breakup of Sonic Youth which – although there wasn’t any kind of formal announcement – now looks like a one-off.  This new band may have some legs as Googe is an excellent counterpart to Shelley in the rhythm section and Sedwards a fine foil for Moore on guitar with both of them playing some leads and allowing the other to drive the song or add textures.

No band that Thurston is in would fear feedback, distortion, or dissonance and the show (as well as the record) delivered those things but there was no shortage of melodies either best exemplified by The Best Day‘s title track.  The highlights of the set were the tunes that allowed the players to stretch out and find some magic in the spaces that opened up.  The opening cuts on the album – the 8 and a half minute Speak to the Wild and the 11 minute Forevemore filled that bill perfectly and were very satisfying.  Enjoy Sedwards’ bangs of doom and Thurston’s Charlie Brown tongue in the picture gallery…