When you’ve spent the last 30 years changing the vocabulary of the electric guitar, you can call on some heavy friends. Lee Ranaldo called on some of the heaviest for Between the Times and the Tides. To fans who’ve come to know Nels Cline through his high-profile work with Wilco in the last half decade, it may be a surprise to know that Cline spent years as the lowkey guitar king of the free-jazz improv underground. It should come as no surprise, then, that Cline and Ranaldo— who has actively championed the avant underground for decades—have collaborated in improvisational situations before, including 2001’s Four Guitars Live gig with Thurston Moore and Carlos Giffoni. While motoring between Wilco gigs, Cline shared some thoughts on working with his old buddy, mentor, and brother in sonic mayhem.

It’s cool to be working with Lee again, I gather?
I’m really proud to be on the record. I’ve admired Lee’s work with Sonic Youth, but also with Kevin Drumm and Text of Light. So I was thrilled. But it’s funny, I always seem to be the last guy to overdub on a record, and that happened here, too. I just went over to the studio in Hoboken [New Jersey] with the idea to play on a couple things to see how it went, and it just kept going. When I listened to the record, I realized I played on about everything! The record is so amazing sounding, though. It has such a beautiful roar to it. To hear the way the guitars all sound together and how strong the songs are—hearing it made me emotional, frankly. To be lucky enough to be part of that sound got to me.

You seem to have such admiration— almost a gratitude, it seems—for what Sonic Youth’s work has meant to you personally.
That’s very true. The influence Sonic Youth had on me, personally, is almost incalculable. Certainly, what they did with guitars was completely intoxicating and attractive to me. I never thought about playing or guitar or sound the same way after I experienced them. So that’s pretty huge.

When I first got into them, around ’83 and Confusion Is Sex, I got so into the whole aesthetic and the way the band gelled. I thought, “This is perfection … how can I create something that’s a complete entity like this.” By the time they got to Daydream Nation and became this kind of rock ’n’ roll juggernaut, that was just so huge in every way—it was hard to not be impressed.

How do you view Sonic Youth’s influence in the larger musical world?
Well, in the ’90s when you started hearing bands like Unwound and Polvo doing things with detuned guitars and eighth-note rhythm-section things, you could spot a very direct influence. There was also a certain outlook on culture—the way they married high and low culture—that felt artful and humorous at the same time. But mostly it was just that the music was excruciatingly beautiful, but not in the sense most people perceive beautiful— and that gave people a different angle from which to hear music in general. A lot of that is in what they did with overtones. I’m not sure many people have been able to touch their sensitivity or their sense of how to create intoxication with guitar overtones. But the way that made folks look at harmonic information is really influential, even if fewer people hear or see that than the bigger pop culture influence.

Society isn’t always so kind to the avant-garde. Is it weird, after so many years of toiling in the avantgarde scene, to look up and think, “Whoa! There’s Lee … there’s Alan Licht … we’re all still around!”?
Yeah, man! Absolutely. I’m so thankful. But when I think about how frail the body can be and how hard basic survival can be, yeah, to get to sit there and work out guitar sounds with Lee or work with Thurston— it’s not lost on me for a second how lucky I am. The avant-garde has less presence in the media right now, but that’s certainly not for lack of effort from Lee and Sonic Youth. Their efforts to expose the world to the avant-garde are totally heroic, but also totally natural.

After playing with Lee in a lot of improvised contexts, was it weird to work in the realm of actual songs and compositions?
No, not at all. I used to grapple with the implications of occupying those two divergent streams, but I don’t really live in that mode of thought anymore. And knowing Lee and Thurston over the years and watching how open and spontaneous they can be in any world, in any way, that’s helped immensely.

“Xtina as I Knew Her” is a very strong example of those two worlds colliding. It’s deep in abstract textures and ripping solo work.
Well, Lee was so relaxed—it was just a very relaxed situation. He just let me come up with whatever idea I wanted, directing me just a little. And then, because we were using Pro Tools, he could grab whatever parts he liked. But I was surprised how much he took and how audible he made it.

Do you have any favorite moments on the record?
I listened to it recently in the car and I didn’t want to get out of the car. I think that’s when I got really emotional about it. I grew up listening to music in the car in L.A., and getting that vibe and all the moods—from the heavy riffage to the lap steel— was really cool. There’s both drama and modesty in it, and things like the lap steel parts that were so spontaneous and inspired.