r in the studio, although they're changing their strategy outside of it.
For "The Eternal," their 16th studio album (June 9), the band left longtime label Geffen Records and returned to the indie world, signing a one-record deal with Matador Records.
Guitarist Lee Ranaldo, a key element of the band's noise-fueled sound since its early days, spoke to Billboard about Twitter, Joy Division and his visual arts projects.
Billboard: Where did the title "The Eternal" come from?
Lee Ranaldo: Thurston (Moore, Sonic Youth's lead singer) thought it up, and I'm not sure if he knew what the connotations were. Obviously, it's an immediate reference to the longevity of the band. But we also found out that there's a Joy Division song called "Eternal," which we didn't realize at the time. I don't know if that was in the back of Thurston's head, but it's funny that we called this "The Eternal" right when we were really interested in Joy Division.
Billboard: Why did you decide not to continue with Geffen?
Ranaldo: We'd been on Geffen for a long time, and I think we felt that we needed a change. I just don't think we felt very close to the people at the label after all this time or that they understood what we were trying to do. I don't have any regrets, because at the time we signed with Geffen, it was the right thing to do. For the first couple (of) records like "Goo" and "Dirty," it afforded us some larger budgets and allowed us to play around. But to some degree it doesn't matter what label we're on, because it doesn't really affect our process at this point.
Billboard: Did you immediately jump to Matador, or did you consider other options?
Ranaldo: There were a bunch of interesting possibilities, including releasing the record ourselves. In the end, we decided we wanted a group of people behind our record rather than doing it ourselves. We talked to a bunch of really cool labels, and Matador is a label that we've always been keen on. Everyone there is a music person rather than a business person: Everyone's going out to shows and just keen on music in general, and they're excited to have us working with them.
Billboard: How much of a need is there for each new release to use different promotional tools?
Ranaldo: All that stuff is factoring in to one degree or another. We've prepared extra tracks for iTunes and for other digital downloading services. There's a Sonic Youth Twitter site and occasionally one of us will bump a thought up to it. I think it's part of the evolving nature of the industry, and we're used to entertaining various ideas at how you market a record. I don't feel like there's any reason to battle against that kind of stuff; I'm not old-guard enough.
Billboard: What is the upcoming tour going to be like?
Ranaldo: We'll be playing most of the new record, and we're never happier than when we're playing our most recent material. There are a lot of songs on this record where more than one of us is singing, so there's going to be more multivocal stuff, which is one thing that'll be different for us. Basically we're going to play a handful of older material, like the recent concerts we've been doing, with one-third new material and two-thirds stuff from every period in our career.
Billboard: Do you have any creative plans outside the band?
Ranaldo: I just released this 12-inch vinyl record, called "We'll Know Where When We Get There," in conjunction with an art show in Paris. It's mostly ambient recordings and some electric guitar. I've also been doing a lot of visual art stuff too: I'm doing a video and sound show with my wife, with live image projection, spoken word, guitar playing and backing tracks. And there's a new book of poems in the works. That stuff always keeps pace with everything else, whenever there's time to fit it in.
(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)
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