YAY: Lee Ranaldo Is "Optimistic" About The Future Of Sonic Youth

You are our hero, Lee Ranaldo. More Williamsburg Waterfront shots here.

We've made no secret of the fact that we've been extremely worried about the future of Sonic Youth following the announcement of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's separation. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, however, guitarist Lee Ranaldo spoke about his upcoming solo album and dropped some extremely calming hints about what to expect from Sonic Youth - namely, likely no more shows in the near future but archival and other projects on tap.

The money quotes are below, and have done quite a bit to set us at ease for a little. We'll keep you posted as more concrete plans surface, because we love Sonic Youth and that's kinda what we do as a music blog.

You just came back from a tour of South America with Sonic Youth and as you said, Kim and Thurston just recently broke up. How did that affect that tour? Was it something that had been going on for a while, or was this a sudden thing for you?

Well, it's not as sudden for me as it's been in terms of the press and what not. Actually, the tour went really well. It really didn't affect it all that much. It was a pretty good tour overall. I mean, there was a little bit of tiptoeing around and some different situations with the traveling– you know, they're not sharing a room anymore or anything like that. I would say in general the shows went really well. It kind of remains to be seen at this point what happens to the future. I think they are certainly the last shows for a while and I guess I'd just leave it at that.

Are you optimistic about the future of the band?

I'm feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point. I mean, every band runs its course. We've been together way longer than any of us ever imagined would happen and it's been for the most part an incredibly pleasurable ride. There's still a lot of stuff we're going to continue to do. There's tons and tons of archival projects and things like that that are still going on, so there are so many ways in which we are tied to each other for the future both musically and in other ways. I'm just happy right now to let the future take its course and I guess I'm kind of thankful that I've got this other project that kind of came about on its own. It wasn't kind of like, well, "Oh the band is ending for a while and I've got to figure out what to do." It kind of naturally happened in the course of things so that was a nice way for that to come about. I played my first show the day after Kim and Thurston announced [their separation.] That was completely weird.

Do you think you'll be playing any of your Sonic Youth songs when you tour for this album?

I think so. I think we're gonna try and work up eventually some of the lesser-known ones, or older ones, not like the "Hey Joni"'s or "Eric Trip"'s, but some of the ones that really didn't get played that much. We're talking about a couple things right now.