Despite their still-broken-up status, Sonic Youth have been releasing a pretty steady drip of new (or new to us, anyway) music for the last few years, and that continues today with the announcement of In/Out/In, a new collection of unreleased material recorded between 2000 and 2010.
The five-song record is arriving March 18 and will be released on LP, CD and cassette. Alongside the announcement, the band has shared the Kim Gordon-led introductory single and quasi-title track "In & Out."
"In & Out" was one of the band's final recordings, tracked at their Echo Canyon studio space in Manhattan in 2010.
In a new Rolling Stone interview reflecting on the songs included in In/Out/In, Lee Ranaldo called the time "a golden period." Pointing to the new Beatles documentary Get Back, he continues, "It's like what the Beatles had when they started working at their own place. It didn't last long for them, but for us, it lasted 10 years. After that, people were getting a bit more scattered and had a lot more outside interests going on. Things were more in flux."
In the same interview, Ranaldo said that Sonic Youth have no current plans to reunite, despite multiple "blank check offers" from festivals. "We're all living and breathing, so you never know what the future will bring," he continued. "But we have not entertained it at this point. It's something that hangs out there and people are always asking about."
The fact of Gordon and Thurston Moore's divorce is obviously at play here, though Ranaldo says it isn't the only thing keeping a reunion from happening:
I've maintained my friendship with everyone in the band to speak to everyone with some degree of regularity, but learning all those old songs doesn't appeal to me that much. The Sonic Youth way [for a reunion] would be to write new material, which would give us a reason to do anything — a whole set of new music as opposed to being a jukebox. And festivals aren't the most rewarding thing to do except for your pocketbook.
Ranaldo adds, "I don't know where we would be if we hadn't stopped. I go and see Wilco and they're still on the road with all this gear. We were in that position at some point. But I guess my head is in a different space. I can't imagine doing it that exact same way."
Check out "In & Out" and see the In/Out/In tracklist below.
In/Out/In:
1. Basement Contender
2. In & Out
3. Machine
4. Social Static
5. Out & In
The five-song record is arriving March 18 and will be released on LP, CD and cassette. Alongside the announcement, the band has shared the Kim Gordon-led introductory single and quasi-title track "In & Out."
"In & Out" was one of the band's final recordings, tracked at their Echo Canyon studio space in Manhattan in 2010.
In a new Rolling Stone interview reflecting on the songs included in In/Out/In, Lee Ranaldo called the time "a golden period." Pointing to the new Beatles documentary Get Back, he continues, "It's like what the Beatles had when they started working at their own place. It didn't last long for them, but for us, it lasted 10 years. After that, people were getting a bit more scattered and had a lot more outside interests going on. Things were more in flux."
In the same interview, Ranaldo said that Sonic Youth have no current plans to reunite, despite multiple "blank check offers" from festivals. "We're all living and breathing, so you never know what the future will bring," he continued. "But we have not entertained it at this point. It's something that hangs out there and people are always asking about."
The fact of Gordon and Thurston Moore's divorce is obviously at play here, though Ranaldo says it isn't the only thing keeping a reunion from happening:
I've maintained my friendship with everyone in the band to speak to everyone with some degree of regularity, but learning all those old songs doesn't appeal to me that much. The Sonic Youth way [for a reunion] would be to write new material, which would give us a reason to do anything — a whole set of new music as opposed to being a jukebox. And festivals aren't the most rewarding thing to do except for your pocketbook.
Ranaldo adds, "I don't know where we would be if we hadn't stopped. I go and see Wilco and they're still on the road with all this gear. We were in that position at some point. But I guess my head is in a different space. I can't imagine doing it that exact same way."
Check out "In & Out" and see the In/Out/In tracklist below.
In/Out/In:
1. Basement Contender
2. In & Out
3. Machine
4. Social Static
5. Out & In
