Listen carefully: On “Principles,” the haunting penultimate track from Kim Gordon’s new solo album, The Collective, are the words she mourns, “an actress of life”? Or is that last word “light” or “lies” or “live” or something else? The line is delivered differently if you hear it in a big stereo, expensive headphones, a beach speaker, dark AirPods, and darker iPhone speakers, having buried it so deep in ambient reverb and industrial bells. You have to open your ears. With vocals mixed so opaque, listening The Collective it is an act of discovery.
Gordon, who began her career as a visual artist before co-founding Sonic Youth, understands that any deep idea requires multiple perspectives. So there are many ways to listen to the album.
The songs appear as avant-garde, trap, old-school hip-hop, noisy or music concrète depending on where you drop the needle. Producer Justin Raisen, who co-produced Gordon's 2019 solo album No domestic registration, has racked up credits recently on tracks for Lil Yachty, Kid Cudi, Teezo Touchdown and Drake. Here, he and Gordon create a sound reminiscent of the raucous avant-garde rap that groups like Clouddead and Dälek were making 20 years ago, but with more modern beats and Gordon's breathy revulsion. Raisen and drummer Anthony Paul Lopez even took credit on the record for “foleying”—recording sound effects as if for film—to open up the textures in unusual ways. The sonic swirl sounds spacious or claustrophobic depending on the moment and when everything is condensed into a pulsating beat, e.g.dolleh dollringing out the last track 'Dream Dollar', it really hits. It is in those moments that Gordon's goals are clearest.
For decades, people have booed Sonic Youth's outré musical techniques and song structures with the word “experimental”, and the band even used the word (ironically?) in an album title 30 years ago. But the description was unfair since most of the experimentation (unusual guitar tunings, odd rhythms) took place before the band entered the recording studio. are intended their music to frighten — and the group saved its boldest experiments (Anagram, Goodbye 20th Century) for the SYR vanity tag. So Gordon's intention Making rhythmic and disturbing avant-garde hip-hop is what drives it The Collective. (In fact, the album looks like the reverse, like a photographic negative, of her 2000 SYR release, a collaboration with DJ Olive and Ikue Mori, titled ミージカル パ一スペクトレック, since formlessness and total space were the goal back then. But even this trio performed the songs live at least once.)
From the opening argument of “Bye Bye,” Gordon's goal The collection it's a surprise. The plucked plush, 808-style synth pads could serve as a soundscape for Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep or ScHoolboy Q lyrics, and are just as effective for Gordon's Delphic rap, in this case a packing list for a trip (“sleeping pills, sneakers, boots… eyelash curler, vibrator, teaser, bye”). There's no chorus, so it's just the beat and the con-dish-on-err air that pulls you in.
Of course, nothing on the album could be called rap per se, although Gordon talks more than she sings, occasionally corroding her voice with Autotune and other grungy filters. There's still too much guitar and pounding drums (especially on “Bye Bye”) to be pure rap, but it's the way it flirts with the form that's most exciting. “The Candy House,” referring to Jennifer Egan's excellent with the same title overlapping-stories-as-a-novelfeatures Migos-like triplets (presumably performed by YBG aka Young Baby Goat) and bell-like pads as Gordon sings, “I will not join the collective” — it's like walking up to the door but not knocking .
On “I'm a Man,” he skewers cracked dudes (like he did with Chuck D on “Kool Thing” decades ago) over a spacious, crazy beat. “Don't call me toxic just because I like your butt,” she exclaims (in character). “It's not my fault I was born a man.” And on the heavy-hitting, peachy 'Blistex', he uses Uncle Luke's favorite word but repackages it: “Pussy Riot, Pussy Galore… don't arrest me… pussy, pussy, pussy… send in the clowns.” (She speaks more words in the gaps, but as in “The Beginnings,” they're unclear, and so is her meaning. Is she really saying, “They don't teach clitoris in school?” It sounds like that.)
Sometimes the music is beautiful, but often it is harsh. On “Shelf Warmer,” he's both at the same time as he combines lyrics like, “That's what you want, that's not what I want, return policy,” with a break beat and rippling guitar. And it's simultaneously on the beat of “I Don't Miss My Mind,” which sighs spectral fumes around her psychedelic monologue: “The color of water, the electric mirror.” It doesn't always make sense, and it's not always pleasant, but it's something you feel either way.
Her goal The Collective, as was her goal with Sonic Youth, is to subvert listeners' expectations. Gordon turns 71 next month and has made one of the boldest albums of her career. If you want to get it though, you have to show it and submit it.
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