Episode twenty: Lee Ranaldo, Sonic Youth

The James McMahon Music Podcast

Bit of a dream come true this – 40 minutes with Lee Ranaldo, guitarist in one of my absolute favourite bands, Sonic Youth. Sometimes I have to pinch myself, I really do. If you’d told me at 14 that one day I’d get to talk to a member of actual Sonic Youth about weird guitars, songwriting, Nirvana, Donald Trump, all sorts of stuff… well, I would probably ask, ‘who’s Donald Trump?’, but you get my point. Hey, remind me to tell you sometime about the time I helped Thurston Moore steal a sofa from the NME office and just how much trouble I got into for doing so. Now’s not the time, but remind me...
We also talk about Lee’s newest release, In Virus Times, an instrumental acoustic piece that comprises four parts, written and performed by Lee in his flat during those strange COVID drenched days twelve months ago, when lockdown shut down the world. It’s perhaps Lee at his most human – in his words, ‘least arch’ – and there’s something almost paranormal about the recording; like a fingerprint left on time itself. It’s out November 12th on the great Mute Records. Don’t sleep on that one.
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