While the future of Sonic Youth remains uncertain in light of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s recent separation, it is heartening to see new material, such as Lee Ranaldo’s amiable Between the Times and the Tides from earlier this year, still emerging from the SY camp. Recorded around half a year before the beginning of Sonic Youth’s hiatus, this recording falls squarely in with the band’s SYR series, which catered to the Youth hardcore, still smarting from the bands decision to sign to Geffen in the early 90s and (in their eyes) the abandonment of the experimentation and noise of the No-Wave years.
Mirroring the inconsistency of the SYR series, Ono’s musical output over the years has veered dramatically between the excellent and courageously bizarre Fly to uncomfortably transparent attempts to manoeuvre into the pop mainstream such as 1985’s awful Starpeace. Putting aside the stale anti-Yoko sentiment that still follows Ono around in the form of bitter Beatles fans (i.e. 90% of the world’s music-listening population) and conservative naysayers, Ono’s stature and level of integrity as an avant garde artist cannot be questioned.
So what does it sound like you ask? Pretty much what you’d expect; an hour of Moore and Gordon providing detuned guitar backdrops and occasional vocals to Ono’s pseudo-orgasmic warblings. It’s fascinating stuff nonetheless. The guitarwork is compelling, touching on material as far back as the first Sonic Youth EP, before alternate tunings were perhaps the main focal point of the band’s musical habitus, when the emphasis was on getting unusual sounds out of the instrument through other methods, such as percussive playing and Derek Bailey-esque atonality (though the latter would obviously be a recurring theme for the band in later years).
The most traditionally “musical” moment on the album appears halfway through ‘Mirror Mirror’. This cleverly placed display of actual discernable melody breaks up what otherwise be sixty minutes of unrelenting non-musicality, and succeeds in transforming Ono’s vocals into a more tangibly musical force, showing just how powerful they can be, in the right context.
A record of extremely limited appeal, but fans of either Ono or the noisier side of Sonic Youth will find something to enjoy about this interesting but unessential offering.
— Ivan Deasy
