Given that this is your first foray into solo singer-songwriter work, did you approach the guitar work differently than you would with Sonic Youth?
Even though I overdubbed some leads, I was really just focusing on playing rhythm guitar and letting Alan or Nels take solos or countermelodies. I wanted to do less. The songs were written on acoustics, and some had intricate picking patterns that were integral to the song, so I did a lot more purely rhythm work than I might have in Sonic Youth.

Keith Richards once talked about dreading playing alone after being in a twoguitar band for so long. Given how many years you’ve been locking horns with Thurston [Moore] in Sonic Youth, did you share that apprehension?
I didn’t really just because they were songs I’d started playing alone. But I also knew I didn’t want to be the only guitar player, and I thought Alan and Nels could really add something to these songs. But there’s also a lot of keyboard, which sets it apart from Sonic Youth and changes what the guitars do to some extent. It changes that dynamic and the way we all approached the guitar layers.

You’ve worked with Alan and Nels in improv situations for years. Now you’re working in the context of compositions and songs. Did you react any differently to each other?
It wasn’t different at all, which was so cool. They were just so inventive with the simple demos I gave them. Alan came back with these parts that were exactly what you’d want a second guitar to play—picking when I’m strumming, strumming when I’m picking. His parts really locked the songs together. And Nels did coloration on everything from smoking leads to loops and stuff—just incredible.

Parts of it really evoke a Neil Young/ Steven Stills- or Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd-style interplay.
Those are such major touchstones for me. Alan actually played with Tom, so he knows that dynamic well. But, yeah, getting in that territory is a thrill—especially with Alan and Nels, who can really do anything between them.

At times, the tunes have a David Crosbyor Joni Mitchell-type feel—there’s often a melancholy feel but also something that’s simultaneously very open and very sturdy in the guitar parts.
So much of that is the tunings—and there are a lot of them on this record. And it definitely came from listening to Crosby and Joni. I mean, there are parts of this record that I actually referred to as “the Joni part” when we were running through them. I played almost entirely in alternate tunings, and Alan is exclusively in standard, but they fit together very well. Nels played some drop tunings for lap steel, but otherwise he was in standard, too.

Did you use any new tunings that you hadn’t tinkered with elsewhere?
Almost every one is new to this record. It’s actually the big problem, because I’ll have to take more guitars on the road than I wanted to. There are six or seven tunings for 10 songs. There’s only one Sonic Youth tuning that goes back several years. Hopefully, I won’t have to bring more than four guitars, or so. I actually did a song in standard, which is maybe the only song I’ve done in standard since the very first Sonic Youth record. I played in D–D–A–E–A–D [string gauges .013, .017, .028, .032, .044, .054] on “Angles,” Shouts,” and “Stranded.” On “Xtina” and “Off the Wall,” I played in D–A#–D–F–C–A# [.017, .020, .026, .032, .047, .054]. And on “Hammer Blows,” I used C–G–C–C–C–G [.018, .014, .028, .035, .045, .056].

Do you still work with a lot of unisons?
I do, but I was discovering most of these tunings as I wrote. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. The song would often steer things in a certain direction.

You’ve always seemed to have a feel for spare, impressionistic pieces, like “Hoarfrost” [from SY’s A Thousand Leaves]—pieces that feel pretty solitary. Is there an appeal in those structures as a guitar player?
I do love to hear a lot of tonality and the interplay of notes. That comes from playing a lot of acoustic guitar, which I’ve always done. And those spare arrangements are a great way to get down deep into that interplay. We rarely let ourselves get as delicate as “Hoarfrost” in Sonic Youth, though. But that might be my favorite recording of one of my songs in the whole Sonic Youth catalog.

There’s a lot of guitar-generated ambience on this record.
That came from layering the three of us. I knew what I wanted for a rhythm bed, but then Alan and Nels were so good with countermelodies that there was a lot of stuff to play with. So it came down to this really fun process of layering and arranging in the mix—“put those two here, take me out there, then me and Alan there”—those kinds of things. I really, really enjoyed that part of it.

“Xtina as I Knew Her” seems to have very deep layers.
That one is the most layered. It was just a rhythm track, then Alan came in and put some chordal stuff on it and very purposefully didn’t play in some sections. Then Nels put on the fiery riffs and we traded back and forth on the leads—mine were more Neil Young-like and his were more fluid. But as dense as it sounds, it’s not quite as wall-of-sound as it might seem. It’s just a few guitars playing off a rhythm section and then John Agnello, who mixed the thing, used a lot of short delay to spread the tracks out a bit—it almost makes it kind of a blur.

Did you use any new gear or consciously try to differentiate this record from a Sonic Youth record from a sound perspective?
No, I didn’t think about it like that. I played a lot of my “Jazzblasters” [Fender Jazzmasters customized with Fender Wide Range humbuckers from old Tele Thinlines], which have a very strong familiarity for me. I played one new guitar— a Jarrell JZH-1x, which is pretty cool. I used that on the standard-tuning stuff. It holds standard tuning really well and is a very nice-playing guitar.

Effects-wise, the big change is that I’m using so much less. I used an Ibanez AD-80 delay and a few distortion pedals—a BJF Electronics Honey Bee and a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive—and that’s pretty much it. I’m not even using a loop pedal, which is unusual for me. Alan is doing much more of the coloration in the live setting, so he has a lot more pedals than me. My rig is really pretty simplified, and that’s nice for a change.

You’ve cultivated a very distinct tone over the last 10 years or so.
Thurston and I have really dialed in our tones in recent years—though I think our real accomplishment was that we got better at mixing our guitars together. And we were so good at it in a way that I really haven’t thought about it in a long time—whose tone was whose. I had just started to hear things as this bigger whole.

You’ve mentioned in the past that you’ve always liked Fender amps for the way they project. Are you still working primarily with Fender amps?
I could never play through a Marshall, really, because I feel like it throws the sounds away from you. They’re good onstage in some instances, because they almost feel like they throw the sound past you. Fenders always seem to bloom right there in front of you. They’re loud in a different way—a more experiential way. In terms of coloration, I find they just sound better. They have that nice, pleasing roundness to them.

Right now, though, I’ve been looking to play through smaller amps. We’ve been trying a lot more 20-watt amps and things like that. For a long time, Super Reverbs have just been the beginning and end of things for me. They just sound great every time. But this time I looked at a lot of stuff I’ve never used before, and I’m still in testing mode. Sonic Youth’s guitar tech, Eric Baecht, is out on tour with Wilco doing Nels’ stuff, so he sends me pictures of what’s out there and what they’re messing with. Jeff Tweedy was playing out of a Tex [a Tex Amps Texosound Bernie 15] that looked really cool, and I was like, “Whoa, what’s the Tex?” So I hooked up with those people and that’s been cool. I’ve used a Fender Deluxe. We’ve also tried some stuff by Victoria—a pretty cool amp that mimics a tweed Deluxe. We tried out the ZT Lunchbox, which Nels speaks very highly of, and I’m going to try out the larger version of that [the Club]. I’m playing out of an Ampeg Jet, and I also tried [Wild Flag vocalist/guitarist] Carrie Brownstein’s 100-Watt Music Man. That sounded pretty cool, too.

There’s a lot of emotion in these songs— and great imagery, too. Visual art—especially photography and film—is such a huge part of your life these days. Are there similarities between that and music that reinforce each other?
They must. Strangely, a lot of it is about decision-making and process. They’re surprisingly similar in that way. I’m getting to a place where I’m pretty comfortable with the process of both, and that’s when unexpected, sometimes more natural things happen. It certainly did with this record.