Lee Ranaldo, Refree - Names Of North End Women (LP) - White Vinyl

Names Of North End Women arrives like a late night transmission between two restless minds. Released on Mute in February 2020, it pairs Sonic Youth founder Lee Ranaldo with Barcelona producer and multi-instrumentalist Raül Refree, whose fingerprints are all over modern Spanish experimental music and who first teamed with Ranaldo on Electric Trim. This time they lean further into texture and rhythm, stepping away from the guitar heroics people might expect and building songs from marimba thuds, vibraphone shimmer, tape hiss, and quietly insistent beats. It feels handmade and inquisitive, like you can hear the room around every sound.

The title track sets the tone with a litany-like vocal from Ranaldo that pulls you in rather than pushes. He has always had a knack for turning observation into incantation, and here the words sit inside Refree’s percussive architecture, more spoken than sung, paced like someone reading notes to themselves at the kitchen table. It is not austere, though. The arrangement glows with warm mallet percussion and little electronics that skitter at the edges. You can sense the duo’s fascination with physical sound, things that hit wood and metal, things that rattle and breathe. It is a record that prizes touch.

Words Out of the Haze feels like the closest thing to a single, if you need one. The vocal floats on a bed of tuned percussion, soft synths, and gently looping patterns that keep resetting the horizon. There is a patience here that rewards close listening. Refree’s background, from producing boundary-pushing pop to rethinking folk traditions, shows in the way he leaves space. Ranaldo uses that space to tell, to reflect, to sketch. The guitars are mostly ghosts, present in texture rather than in riffs, and when they do appear they’re treated like another piece of the ensemble.

Much of the album was crafted between New York and Barcelona, and you can hear that split personality. There is the urban hum of tape machines and room tone, and there is the Mediterranean clarity of hand-played percussion and air around the instruments. The duo talk in interviews about building songs from rhythm up, and the result feels less like a band in a room and more like a small workshop where ideas are soldered and sanded until they click. Little shards of field recordings slip in, voices and clatter, never as gimmick, more as a way to make the music feel lived in.

What gives Names Of North End Women its heart is the way it sits with memory and drift. Ranaldo is in storyteller mode, curious rather than confessional, tracing lines between places and people and objects. The writing is specific without being pinned down, and the soundworld mirrors that. You could shelve it with experimental records, but it is not cold. It is humane, even friendly, and it invites you to lean closer. The sequencing makes sense on a turntable too. Side one pulls you into that percussive city of sound, side two lets the pieces breathe and blur. If you are the sort who hunts for Lee Ranaldo vinyl, this one makes a strong case for a spot next to Dirty-era detours and his more song-driven solo sets.

For those who know Refree from his work with artists across Spain, the partnership feels spot on. He is a sensitive shaper of timbre and negative space, and he gives Ranaldo a frame that flatters the voice and the words. When the two lock in, the music blooms into something that is neither rock nor ambient nor poetry with accompaniment, yet borrows energy from all three. It is the sort of record that creeps up on you across a few plays, and then you start hearing those marimba patterns in the tram rattle on the way to work.

If you are browsing a Melbourne record store and stumble on Names Of North End Women vinyl in the Mute section, give it a spin when you get home after dark. The low-end thump and the small percussive clicks sit beautifully on wax, and the quiet passages open up when the needle drops. There are copies around if you want to buy Lee Ranaldo records online, and it sits nicely alongside other Lee Ranaldo albums on vinyl for anyone building out that post-SY shelf. For searchers casting a wider net for vinyl records Australia, this is a tasteful addition that repays repeat listens rather than quick thrills.

It is easy to talk about Ranaldo’s history, but the better story is that he is still searching, and Refree is a brilliant partner for that search. Names Of North End Women is not a victory lap. It is an exploratory walk that finds music in surfaces, syllables, and small movements, and it sounds more alive each time you drop the needle.