Lee Ranaldo
The 10 Best Indie and Alternative Leonard Cohen Covers
Leonard Cohen is the definition of a songwriter’s songwriter, the kind of artist you’d seldom hear on the radio, but was revered by countless musicians as one of the greatest lyricists in the world. An accomplished poet and novelist before he ever recorded an album, Cohen’s songs were vivid and literary, full of politics, dark humor, and frank sexuality. Though classic rock icons like Billy Joel and James Taylor have covered him, and Pentatonix has moronically attempted to make “Hallelujah” into a Christmas standard, Leonard Cohen’s legacy has grown more when he’s been covered by artists who share Cohen’s subversive edge or name-checked in songs like Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea.” November 7 marks the 5th anniversary of the Canadian legend’s death in 2016, so here’s a look back at 10 of the b...
The Cribs Enlist Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo for ‘I Don’t Know Who I Am’
The Cribs and Lee Ranaldo are back together again, 13 years later. The indie rockers enlisted the Sonic Youth guitarist for their Monday-released track, “I Don’t Know Who I Am.” The song is the first time they’ve linked up with Ranaldo since his feature on their 2007 track “Be Safe.” “Working with Lee on ‘Be Safe’ was without question one of the highlights of our career as a band, and we think that ‘I Don’t Know Who I Am’ is a worthy follow up collaboration,” The band said in a statement. “We are very proud of how it turned out. Lyrically, the song addresses the disconnect that Ryan and myself have always had with our biological paternal lineage – and how that may have shaped our views on masculinity, gender roles, and the men we ultimately grew up to be.” “I ...
Lee Ranaldo Shares Cover of John Lennon’s ‘Isolation’
Earlier this year, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo released a collaborative new album with Raul Refree and also launched his own Bandcamp page where he shared a bunch of rarities. Now, the guitarist has unveiled yet another buried gem from his catalog: 1998’s Amarillo Ramp (for Robert Smithson). In conjunction with that release, Ranaldo shared a video for a cover he did of John Lennon’s “Isolation,” which, like the others who have tackled the song in recent weeks, feels fitting. Here’s what Ranaldo had to say about the song: “During this time of enforced global confinement – the ‘planetary pause’, as I’ve been calling it, I’ve been sorting thru some old releases, and came across my version of John Lennon’s‘Isolation’, which was recorded back in 1991 and released on the 1998 album Amarillo R...
