It's hard not to read the Sonic Youth guitarist's new solo joint as a reckoning with SY founders Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s marital split. "These days are so uncertain," Ranaldo sings. But with Wilco's Nels Cline helping him spool out riffs this serenely pretty, Ranaldo's future sounds assured.

Listen to Lee Ranaldo's "Off the Wall":   
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“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.