There are moments in modern life when nature intrudes and reality is transformed. When I was living in New York, a twister skipped across my Brooklyn neighborhood. It was tiny as tornadoes go, but enough to tear off roofs, flood the streets and knock down far too many trees. In the aftermath, we all crept out to survey the devastation, no longer hard-bitten New Yorkers but talking apes gaping at the ruined streets of the Forbidden City.

The core songs of Last Night on Earth, the new album by Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and his band The Dust, were written in the wake of hurricane Sandy, in a week without electricity or water, but with mercifully little human damage in Ranaldo’s Lower Manhattan neighborhood.

“It was kind of amazing,” he says over the phone. “No matter what anyone had planned or what they had to do, there was just kind of this enforced stop to everything. It was very intense.” But for the prolific writer, the forced unplugging wasn’t without a silver lining: “We got a lot of work done that week.”

Ranaldo was speaking from Poitiers, France, on the last leg of his European tour. Next week, he and The Dust will be playing San Jose and San Francisco as they hit North America.

“I didn’t want to give the impression that this was a concept album or anything like that,” Ranaldo qualifies. “There wasn’t too much to do in the evenings, so I was just strumming chords and sort of improvising some of these songs. I must say the effect of the storm on New York definitely found its way into some of the lyrics as well.”

Disclaimers aside, the songs that make up Last Night on Earth are dreamy and evocative, redolent of that post-adrenaline euphoria, familiar to anyone who’s had a close encounter with fate, when the ordinary is suffused with significance and life seems to be unfolding outside of time.

Although he is the songwriter, Ranaldo makes it clear that the fully realized versions are collaborations, the result of months of rehearsing with The Dust—Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, Alan Licht on guitar and Tim Lüntzel on bass. Together, they produce sounds that are somewhere between droney psychedelia and shimmering jangle pop. The music builds and soars, loops and even meanders in passages that can only be called “jams”—a telltale trace of Ranaldo’s well-known affection for the Grateful Dead. Warmer and more intimate than Sonic Youth, Renaldo’s new band still has an experimental and cerebral side that twists pop clichés and gives an agreeable bite.

I ask what it’s like to be the frontman now, and Ranaldo gives a modest answer. “I have a strong confidence in the songs, and all the rest just falls into place.”

How about carrying the leads?

“[At first] it was a little weird, singing every song in the set…. But I got over that quickly. I definitely like to sing, and it’s been really fun. The singing part of it has been one of the more enjoyable aspects for me.”

As the conversation winds down, I bring up Lou Reed’s death. With CBGBs now housing an expensive men’s boutique and SoHo and the Lower East Side a playground for the ultra wealthy, a chapter in pop history seems definitively over. Am I correct in seeing Last Night on Earth as perhaps an elegy for the gritty bohemia of ’70s–’80s New York?

“Well, I don’t know…” Polite. He means, “No.”

Ranaldo’s response demonstrates the same forward drive that has characterized his 30 years in music. “That’s the way history moves. You know, you have people from any particular period carrying elements of that period forward, and hopefully synthesizing it with new stuff, and passing some of that information on. It’s kind of the natural course of events, I guess.

“[Sonic Youth] were lucky enough to be living in New York at a time of great experimentation … so we had a firsthand view of that. It feels pretty special to have been around during that time. And we’ve carried aspects of that forward with us. … It all gets passed along.”

For Lee Ranaldo, every night is the last on Earth. The past is not a subject for nostalgia or sentimentality, only a source of tools for carving something new from an unknown future. Something more to pass along.

Lee Ranaldo and The Dust perform at the Blank Club on Dec. 10. More info.

Ugly Winner’s new album, Inside Your Wave, is bigger, louder and packs more of a punch then their 2010 album, Minutes, Years & Never.

What makes the new album more gripping, in part, is how much better the recording quality is. The guitars are thicker and fuller, the drums are crisper and the vocals are more artistically drenched in reverb and echo. Interestingly it was all recorded in the band’s home.

This album is a step forward, stylistically, for the San Jose four-piece. They’ve matured past the standard indie rock tricks of lush, gleaming guitars, heavy dynamic building and aimless Sonic Youth-inspired jams, and have emerged with a collection of understated art-rock songs.

The best song on the album, “Perfect Nothing,” is a dreamy, half-tempo, amphitheater, sing-along rocker, though not to be confused with say, a Bon Jovi arena anthem. The music is far too weird for that, but it does seem like a subtle tip of the hat to the larger-than-life side of rock ‘n’ roll.

Compared to Minutes, Years & Never, the guitar work and song structure on the new album is much more creative and unpredictable. The opening track, “Fret One (Grow Old),” is a hard-rocker that hangs on just a couple notes, like an early Joy Division song, full of the punk rock fire without having any parts that could be reasonably construed as punk rock. The vocals weave in and out of the heavy echo effect, using it at moments for an extra punch of aggression.

Another distinguishing element to this new record is the reoccurring jangle-pop, angular guitar work. Songs like “Thoughtful Spots,” “These Hands They Shake” and “HaHa” all have guitar parts that could almost pass for Modest Mouse post-punk dance riffs.

Where Ugly Winner have developed the most is their ability to wander with focus, like on the ending of “HaHa.” Ugly Winner shifts gears, but they don’t drift away, they take us to a totally new, but logical destination musically.

The two songs that most resemble the older Ugly Winner sound, “So Well” and “TCBAHBS” still show growth. Their use of finger-picking guitar lines and dynamic-building shows more subtly than before.” So Well,” in particular strikes an odd balance between a straight forward rock song, a touching ballad and a strange, creepy horror song.