How many Lee Ranaldo records is too many?

OK "Fire Island" is bringing it, this is much more of what I wanted

show you pictures of weirdos and lee ranaldo

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/1651/johnandlee02qm4.jpg

Throwing in other SYers for good measure.

http://a1.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/118/7cae0693a8e442599bcc86fac96d8115/l.jpg

some serious weirdos in this pic
http://www2.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/Fender+Jazzmaster+50th+Anniversary+Concert+TsdPZidXA-tl.jpg

wow that's like the first picture ever where Thurston doesn't look like a dorky teenager - looks pretty old actually

Passed Thurston a few times on the Lower East Side the last couple of years and, yeah, he is starting to look only 10 or 15 years younger than he is, not 30.

Also, I like the Lee record a lot. In my mind it really picks up after the first 4 songs (not that I dislike all of those songs, I just like the latter 2/3rds of the record a lot more). Licht's playing on the live clips I had seen didn't excite me that much, and neither did the versions of those songs ("Angles" and "Off the Wall" or whatever), but on the record all of the guitars/solos sound fucking great. Some really good textured playing on there, and to my ears way more varied than any of the 00's SY records (not that I didn't really like those SY records either, just in response to the "this sounds like late-period SY to me"). Anyone getting that feel should just skip the first 4 songs and return to them later.

Who are the two blokes next to Lee in the picture Tyler posted? They look kind of familiar but I don't know where from.

that's jimmy rip and tom verlaine (rip is verlaine's regular guitarist). both weirdos.

Aha! Thought that might have been Tom, but he looked a good deal balder than the last time I saw him.

nels and thurston also making him look uncharacteristically un-giant.

apparently married life is bad for nels's health and seperated life is bad for thurston's health

oh i thought you said 'un-gaunt' like they were getting paunchy, nevermind

all i can really look at in that pic is mascis. so great.

lee is live on wfmu right now!

Hey, thanks man. Just saw this and am tuning in now ...

Ranaldo sounding great on FMU. Always was my fave SY member.

lol, talking heads cover!

Hah, awesome

Man, missed most of it I guess. Gonna have to dig through the archives to hear the rest.

listening to the album this morning -- not sure if it's a masterpiece, but it's damn good. pretty much exactly what i wanted to hear out of a "song-based" lee record. would love to see this band live.

Really harsh Pitchfork review for some reason, not sure what the point of it was. I'll bring a point up with Lee that I do with SY all the time: how many other 50-whatever-year-old musicians still trucking in rock music would deliver a better record than this? Not a REASON to put a record out, mind you, but on the scale of similar efforts to his peers, this Lee record is pretty great.

Yeah, I thought that review was overly harsh as well.

It represents a chance for Ranaldo to nab a headline without having to talk about Gordon and Moore's Facebook relationship status.
blecch. annnnyway.

what a terrible, terrible review.

I've said this before, and I'm probably just projecting on the writers here, but I sometimes get the feeling that they toss a harsh review at sacred cows like this just to sort of prove they aren't beholden to the canon or something.

Kinda got that impression with this one, especially in light of the stuff that guy typically reviews/covers, but I am on a non-cynicsm train in my life these days, and would prefer to just chalk it up to a "dude was not feeling this album at all" moment. Bummer of a lead review and all that, though. Plus, calling the solos "banal" was particularly rich. If any dudes deserve to own their sounds on a record at this point, Licht, Cline, and Ranaldo are high on that list.

I mean, calling Ranaldo out for using a trick like supplying menacing guitar underneath a pretty finger-picked acoustic is also trying a little too hard, as again: didn't SY establish a whole range of variations on this idea? Why not just criticize him for making a guitar record?

I really like Grayson Currin's writing in general and find him to be quite thoughtful in general but this review is embarrassing. I'm not even enamored of the record, but this just misses the point so much. The Lee band, minus Steve, played the whole thing at Other Music in NY last night and it was mostly great, despite it being only their fourth or fifth show together. Lee and Alan's guitar interplay live is terrific to watch. Two songs I don't like on the album didn't open up for me live, though: "Fire Island (Phases)" and "Stranded." I think it's a lyrics things but they also felt musically clunky live. V. good album overall though and will make a point to revisit it throughout the year.

"in general"

You know what, hearing the live version of "Lost" on that WFMU broadcast has totally won me over. Lee playing with a fluid, accomplished player like Licht totally changes the dynamic (not that I would trade it for prime SY mind you), there are some great exchanges going on. I am excited to see this band now, with a few more weeks of playing under their belts they could be pretty fucking great.

most of the the other reviews aren't so postive too..

http://www.metacritic.com/music/between-the-times-and-the-tides/critic-reviews

Don't really look at Metacritic, but took a peak now. Seems that 10 out of 12 reviews are "positive", giving it a score of 75 or something. Which doesn't mean anything other than that this batch of reviews generally state that it is a decent to good record (or something like that).

Out of curiosity, I looked at the Observer review, which was the other negative review. It was one paragraph long, most of which made no strong statements whatsoever (and seemed pretty positive actually), then the last sentence states that the record is sonically interesting but the lyrics not so much. All of which somehow added up to 2 out of 5 stars. Worthless review.

the gently major-label "Wish Fulfillment"

finally sitting down to listen to this now, sounds good so far. is it the same personnel for the whole album or are there liner notes online somewhere that say who plays on what?

It is not the same personnel other than that I think Steve, Alan, and Lee are on every track. The bassist Irwin Menken plays on most of the songs, but apparently Jim O'Rourke plays bass on a song. Any keyboards are Medeski, so he is easy to pick out, and Nels Cline plays pedal steel (or lap?) and then some straight guitar, which is also pretty easy to pick out. Apparently Bob Bert is on there too. Obviously I did not look at a track-by-track list of who plays on what, and I am not sure that that is available yet, but the record is out now, so maybe Matador has it listed?

i was a bit disappointed with this record on first listen. will have to try again. :( i had hoped to be bowled over by it.

I was expecting to be disappointed, I really wasn't moved by the first couple of songs that circulated (those live clips from the first show), so lowered expectations may have helped. It does make me wish he had done this in the 80s and 90s too though, as it has kinda convinced me that he may have pulled off some great shit without the SY modus operandi hanging over his songs. It makes me think that he may have a better record of this type in him as well, I hope he makes another.

What I like about this record is that it avoids the predictable guitar clashes of his work with Sonic Youth. I agree with the complaints about the lyrics, but other than that it's a very fine arranged and enjoyable record. The PF review is one of their worst. Today's review of the new O'Rourke/Ambarch/Heino cd is an example of how it should be: about the music.

but the record is out now, so maybe Matador has it listed?

Picked up a physical copy yesterday, but unfortunately there is no track-by-track breakdown which is pretty annoying, imo, for a record with a varied cast like this

And yet there's Lee in the Brian Turner interview portion from his WFMU session Tuesday having rhapsodies about how nice it was back in the old days of the album as this magical unit of music-delivery, when you could sit down and read liner notes and look over personnel info and groove on cover art etc...lol.

haha

Yeah, that's too bad, but I do think you can pick out exactly who is playing what on each song, you just have to listen to them to figure it out. Seems like an odd thing to leave out of the liners though.

yeah as a Nels Cline stan i had a similar frustration with an Eleni Mandell album he played on where the liners were not very specific as to what he played on but there were of course some tracks where it was obviously him

I like this better than the Thurston joint from last year!

^^^ me too.

Really loving this album.

yeah this is better than it has any right to be - pretty much confirms my feeling that I mainly stuck with SY for the Lee songs

I read a couple of the negative reviews while listening to the first couple of tracks, and nearly bailed. I'm glad I didn't. This is a good album!

BBC review by Spencer Grady: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6z5c

i Just. Don't. Get. people who can't write about this record without slighting SY's other work, etc, but i guess i'm pretty avowedly an SY fanboy by this point. this new lee album is thoroughly excellent, some of his best works, as was thurston's demolished thoughts, as was murray street, etc etc