It would be easy for Lee Ranaldo to become complacent or fall into a creative holding pattern, especially since he has been party to some of the biggest changes in popular music in the last 20 years. For example, Sonic Youth’s decision to release their 1988 album Daydream Nation on Capitol (they signed with Geffen for their next release, and stayed there for almost 20 years) inspired many counter-culture rock bands to make the switch too, including, most prominently, Nirvana, who directly acknowledged the influence. And yet, the group seems to be constantly refreshing their ethos. Last year’s The Eternal was the band’s first record on Matador, the indie distributor known for being a loving home to Belle and Sebastian, Kurt Vile, and the late Jay Reatard. Many critics commented that being on the new label helped contribute to the band’s reinvigorated sound; The Eternal sounds like it should have been written by performers half their age. Ranaldo talked to The Varsity about the music industry, who he likes, and new beginnings.
Chris Berube: There’s been a lot of talk about moving from a major back to a smaller label (Matador), and the idea that the band has been rejuvenated in some way by this. Do you make anything of that?
Lee Ranaldo: I think we kind of rejuvenate ourselves. We’ve been doing it long enough that it’s not really about the label. But I will say that it’s been exciting to move back on to a label where people are actually interested in music, and where we’re excited about music that’s being made for the label. This was an exciting record to make, and we were happy to be making it for a label like Matador. The reception both within the label and the public has been great. And it’s cemented the fact that we’re in a good place right now in that respect. We had a good run at Geffen, and there isn’t too much bad we can say about them, but as our relationship there went on, it just became less and less interesting. There were less and less people we were interested in talking to about our music. With Matador, that’s certainly a change from that.
CB: When you joined Geffen, it was an epochal shift in music in a lot of ways. But today, the landscape has changed enough that it makes sense for bands to join these smaller labels.
LR: Yeah, I mean, when we moved to Geffen we moved there for distribution reasons. They were saying they could get our records in stores when our records weren’t in stores with the labels we were on. We would travel to cities and people would say “we love you guys, and we can’t get your records in our stores.” And the climate now is so different. First of all, you don’t need a store any more to get your records, which is a crazy thing, but a label like Matador has just as good a shot at selling music right now as a major. The majors are floundering while smaller labels like Matador know their core audience and how to sell to them.
CB: You’d mentioned that you’re now on a label with a lot of bands you’re excited about, or possibly admire. At this point in the progression of Sonic Youth, do you ever wish that you were starting out as a new band today? Or do you still feel pretty liberated as an artist?
LR: Certainly we feel very liberated in terms of what we do. We can still go in any different direction we want. I don’t know if I would want to be starting out today. The landscape has changed so much, there’s so much more music available and it almost seems like it’s harder for a new band to rise above the general glut of what is out there, both good and bad. It’s always daunting when you’re brand new to figure out how to break into the business, but when [the band] was starting [it] was the perfect time for a band like us to sneak in behind the lines in a way.
CB: Given that Sonic Youth has been around for so long as a project, it’s interesting how you’ve stuck with the same layout of instruments that you’ve had. You’re certainly known as a great guitar player, but has there been the consideration of moving to less orthodox instrumentation?
LR: We’ve considered it, but we haven’t. We got into this out of the enthusiasm of being a rock band, and to us a rock band is two guitars, bass, and drums. And certainly that’s our main interest. We’ve gotten very good at playing the kind of music that we do, but I don’t think any of us would profess to be good players. We’re certainly good players, but we’re also not trained multi-instrumentalists or anything like that. There was a point where Thurston and I were advocating for doing a record that was two pianos, bass, and drums. But the idea got nixed by the rhythm section. But we were half-serious about it at one point, we thought it would be a cool alternative and it would still sort of pick up the same sort of tonalities on the piano that we get on the guitar. But our main interests are still being guitarists and being in a rock band.
CB: Do you feel like to some extent that’s so definitional to the band that you couldn’t shake off that aesthetic while still being Sonic Youth?
LR: I guess so. It’s much more about certain sensibilities and an outlook that the four of us have in terms of what we’re after and what we’re trying for. It’s obvious after all this time that we’re not out for fame and fortune. We’re dedicated to being a band that’s dedicated, that’s making new music, and staying interested in what we’re doing. I think our outlook in terms of the way we deal with younger bands, this inclusive outlook that we have, I think is mostly what defines the group.
CB: Are there any bands today you admire?
LR: Yeah, the list is broad in terms of new bands. We tend to be turned on by all kinds of music, from stuff that’s been made this year for the first time to stuff that’s been made by people who have been in the business way longer than we have. As for music that’s kind of come on this year, there’s a group Thurston has been working with called Hush Arbours that I really like a lot. I love their new record. There’s this guy that’s been around a long time, Bill Callahan, he’s been putting stuff out as Smog for a long time.
CB: He had a terrific record this year!
LR: That record has been knocking me out, I love that record. Groups like Times New Viking, there seems to be so much new stuff happening right now. Our impression is that there’s great new music everywhere you look, and it’s just a matter of finding it. Whether it’s people writing songs or people doing more noisy compositional kind of stuff, it’s all over the place.
CB: I read that your band has been taking more of an interest in relationships and how relationships develop between people in your storytelling. What has been the impetus for moving on to that focus?
LR: Not sure where that quote comes from or who said it, but it sounds like something I might have said about my particular lyric-writing. I don’t know if I would say that in general about the band, though I don’t know who said it. [It was Ranaldo.] That’s always interested me to some degree to write about people and things close to your heart, in whatever form it’s couched in. I could go in for straightforward singer-songwriter stuff, but I could also go in for stuff that’s more cryptically written, that is still somehow very personal seeming. It’s always been something that interests me about artists I’ve been drawn very close to: how you get a sense of who they are through what you hear. I like that idea. I like it to be less abstract, more personal in some way.
CB: I would not get the sense of you as someone who would get into singer-songwritery stuff that much.
LR: Really? We get into all kinds of that stuff, from Joni Mitchell to Neil Young. We love all kinds of that stuff, younger singer-songwriters, older singer-songwriters. I mean, Chan Marshall, it’s all over the place.
