Rick Rizzo,
Since the advent of rock ‘n’ roll, the electric guitar has dominated the musical landscape above all other instruments. But hegemony can be followed by stasis and decay, and there’s no denying that electric guitars are now used to make a lot of cliched music. Guitar-based grunge, punk, and speed-metal styles can sound staid and conservative compared to music made with samplers and other electronic instruments that push sonic boundaries. Sometimes it makes you wonder if the electric guitar has anything left to say.
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The Chicago-based Atavistic label has recently issued a broad array of archival and new music, ranging from Glenn Branca’s symphonies to songs by rock bands like Eleventh Dream Day and the Wolverton Brothers. The one thing that ties all of Atavistic’s releases together is that they feature electric guitars played in extreme or unusually expressive ways. At a recent concert called Five With Six, five guitarists with the label played solo material, the best among them demonstrating creative new ways to use their instrument.
Lee Ranaldo closed the evening with a performance that was less visually spectacular than Sharp’s but equally as impressive. A member of Sonic Youth, Ranaldo came straight to the club from that band’s appearance at Lollapalooza. With Sonic Youth he’s pioneered the use of unusual tunings and techniques (their 1986 show at Metro was the first time I ever saw someone play guitar with a screwdriver and a drumstick). But Ranaldo’s solo recordings have little to do with rock. The piece he played at the Double Door was more like a symphony than a solo; Ranaldo manipulated masses of sound rather than notes and chords. He started with a low hum obtained by moving a slide from side to side on the guitar’s neck, topping it off with a slow succession of cloudy swells as he gently tapped the guitar neck or adjusted his digital delay box. Ranaldo was an unassuming figure onstage, backlit by dim blue light, but the minimal staging directed attention to his music. He played a battered, gutted Fender Jaguar that looked like it had been rescued from a garbage can, but the sounds he coaxed from it weren’t at all shabby. They ranged from lush to harsh, at one point sounding like airplanes roaring overhead, but they were rarely conventionally guitarlike. When he did play a quiet, melodic passage without any effects, the familiar sound was fresh and startling. Ranaldo’s approach was much more impressionistic than Sharp’s, but they both offered evidence that there’s life left in electric guitars.
