Xtina

Lee Ranaldo - Between The Times And The Tides (2012) {Matador OLE-980-2}
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© 2012 Matador Records | OLE-980-2
Rock / Experimental Rock / Alternative / Indie Rock

With the dreamy, brooding quality to songs like "Mote," "Hey Joni," and "Wish Fulfillment," Lee Ranaldo could be seen as the George Harrison of Sonic Youth, offering a more lyrical contrast to the blunter and more abstract approaches of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. On his solo album Between the Times and the Tides, he expands on those qualities in his music and reveals new ones, inviting friends including Alan Licht, Steve Shelley, Jim O'Rourke, and Nels Cline along to help. Some of these songs could have been fine additions to a Sonic Youth album, particularly "Xtina as I Knew Her" which, with its expansive swath and dark, dissonant solos swirling around the plainspoken clarity of his vocals, comes the closest to Ranaldo's work with the band.

The soundtrack to Christina Aguilera's silver screen debut Burlesque shines the spotlight on Xtina, who is in full-bore diva mode – a return to the splashy swing of Back to Basics after the robotic R&B of Bionic. Of course, many of her collaborators from Bionic remain on Burlesque: Tricky Stewart is responsible for the glitzy dance, and Sia Furler co-writes the ballads, their contributions slotted between two Cher songs designed to push the narrative forward, two Etta James covers, a slice of heavy camp in the mincing "But I’m a Good Girl", and a Nicole Scherzinger co-written interpolation of Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" that provides a bewildering conclusion to this soundtrack. Some of this stuff is quite good, particularly when Christina swings her hips to Etta's lead, bringing to mind the zest of "Ain’t No Other Man".