Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth Streams New Solo Album

Three decades after debuting with alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth, guitarist Lee Ranaldo is releasing his first proper studio album. Rolling Stone has a stream of the record, called ‘Between the Times and the Tides,’ which hits stores on March 20.

The album — technically far from being his first solo set, but philosophically it definitely carries the vibe of a debut — was created last year during a creative explosion. “Over the summer I pulled out a bunch of my acoustic guitars and was just fooling around and a whole bunch of songs just started generating, just kind of out of nowhere,” Ranaldo told the mag.

“My material for Sonic Youth often started on acoustic guitar,” he adds. “What was refreshing about this was just to see all these songs sprout and actually kind of follow each other down this road and actually get completed. I’ve got millions of tapes of half-completed songs and for some reason, at this point, I had the energy to take them all the way through to the end.”

Most of the album is straightforward rock and roll, with a few changes of pace mixed in, like the ballad ‘Stranded,’ on which Ranaldo gently sings, “Don’t wanna throw a wrench in the works / But this whole town here is full of jerks / If a cloud is in your eye / I’ll remove it from the sky.”

With the immediate future of Sonic Youth in question after the marital breakup of band members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Ranaldo plans to continue working solo for now. In May, he’ll support M. Ward on several shows, followed by a brief European tour in June.

You can stream ‘Between the Times and the Tides’ in full over at Rolling Stone.