On “Moroccan Mountains,” the sprawling opener of Lee Ranaldo’s Electric Trim, the Sonic Youth founder intones, “For 20 years or more, we had our screwdrivers out/trying to disassemble the panels.” Likely not a literal invocation—SY spent approximately three decades taking apart the rock music with avant-garde glee and inventive destruction—the song finds Ranaldo looking back wistfully. Alongside his band the Dust, which features Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and guitarist Alan Licht, Ranaldo turned to Barcelona producer Raül “Refree” Fernandez, vocalist Sharon Van Etten, and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline for additional sonic touches, including electronic beats, delicate harmonies, bold horn sections, washes of synth, pop attitude and acoustic ragas. It’s an exceptionally mixed batch of songs. The title track rides a familiar art-rock riff before erupting into a joyful affirmation of fearlessness and “Purloined” locks into a Krautrock/ progressive mode, bolstered by positively hooky melodies. On the mellow “Last Looks,” redolent with soft rock and country ambiance, Ranaldo and Van Etten duet, his distinctive honk wrapped with her lilting voice like an art-damaged Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Ranaldo’s lyrics, many written in collaboration with novelist Jonathan Lethem, mark the best of his career. On the jaunty “Uncle Skeleton,” which lands somewhere between disco Dead and Ennio Morricone, Ranaldo and Lethem evoke the most gruesome moments of the novelist’s 2016 book, A Gambler’s Anatomy.