Lenny Kaye - Goin' Local [Blue Bone Splash]

Lenny Kaye has spent more than fifty years shaping rock and roll from just off center. He assembled the Nuggets compilation that gave garage rock its canon, he has stood beside Patti Smith since 1971, and he has produced and written about the music for decades. At seventy-nine, he has finally made a solo album of his own.

Goin' Local collects twelve songs written across many years, and it plays like exactly that: a lifetime of listening filtered into one voice. The title track and "This Love" carry the wiry New York rock feel you would expect, while "Let's Make A Memory" and "A Friend Like You" reach toward sixties psychedelic pop. "Solstice" is co-written with Patti Smith and features Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, and "Pennsylvania Girls" brings in Railroad Earth's Tim Carbone on violin. Tony Shanahan produced half the record with Kaye, and jazz pianist Matthew Shipp, multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield, and The Jayhawks' John Jackson all turn up.

It is unhurried, warm, and completely unguarded, a debut from someone who has nothing left to prove and clearly enjoyed making it anyway.

This limited edition is pressed on blue bone splash vinyl via Yep Roc, mastered at Sterling Sound and limited to 1,000 copies worldwide. A first solo album five decades in the making.