REVIEW

Lee Ranaldo and El Rayo Colchester Arts Centre

New York noise punks Sonic Youth were always investigating the chaotic potential within pop songs with their sprawl of detuned guitars and blasts of frantic riffing.

One half of the band’s guitar attack, Lee Ranaldo, has further courted his experimental side since the Youth’s split in 2011, including work as a visual artist and teaming up with his wife Leah Singer to combine elements of live music and theatre.

However, coming to the Colchester Arts Centre stage as Lee Ranaldo and El Rayo on Friday night, he revealed a set of straightforward but superbly crafted pop rock songs to surprise yet delight his fans.

He even, for the most parts, left the wild electric guitar wig outs to Raul ‘Refree’ Fernandez, the multi-instrumentalist with whom Lee co-wrote many of the songs on the band’s new album, Electric Trim, while he weaved more pastoral melodies on acoustic.

Lee was the least used of Sonic Youth’s three singers yet his voice outshined both Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. Now he seems more at ease singing lead, possessed of a clear-voiced country croon similar to Simone Felice and he’s confident enough to join his three band mates in soaring, almost Beach Boys-like harmonies on some tracks.

There are some remnants of his Sonic Youth guitar cruelty as she scythes away at the neck of his fender with a violin bow to create a wash of ambient sound to usher in Key/Hole, a favourite track from Lee’s time with his last band, The Dust.

He seems at ease on stage, comfortable as the frontman, rather than the more brooding presence he had in Sonic Youth. It bleeds into his songs, which are open-hearted and mature musings on life, such as Last Looks “love me as I am” appeal.

Such open-heartedness extends to the gig’s closing song, a cover of the Velvet Underground’s Oceans, in tribute to Lee’s much-missed one-time New York neighbour Lou Reed. It’s a stomping soaring, cover with drummer standing Mo Tucker-like to smash out the song’s coda.

Lee Ranaldo’s grab for the sonic simple life has paid sweet dividends. A sweet surprise for Sonic Youth stalwarts and new fans alike.

MARK EDWARDS