For anyone to create a whole, new, recognisable – and kick-ass – musical style in this day and age is no small achievement. To do so as you enter your 70s is pretty mind boggling. Yet somehow, that’s what sometime Sonic Youth-er Kim Gordon did on her second solo album The Collective in 2024. She’d already made a huge splash with No Home Record in 2019, where she smashed all kinds of dance, electronic and hip hop elements into distorted alt-rock with uncommon panache, but The Collective tightened the focus, building a whole language around mutations of the modernist drum patterns and bass tones of trap and drill.
Nobody else in alternative music before or since has grasped the appeal of, nor adapted to, those beats in the same way, and though some alt-rap artists like JPEGMAFIA do embrace distortion and punk influence, none of them have ever come close to Gordon’s unique boho swagger and native grasp of noise. It’s clear she knows she was on to something good, too, as she’s ramped up the hip hop elements here even more, dialling back the rock aspects and pushing the (really great) beats to the fore for a lot of the album. Crucially, too, on these tracks she’s also started to adopt the vocal patterns of rap subgenres, too: notably what’s more or less pejoratively referred to as “mumble rap”.
In principle, it should work. Gordon absolutely grasps that her inspirations aren’t about 90s rap style verbal dexterity, but are narcotic, impressionistic, built on repetition and surrealism: it really should suit an art-punk approach. Somehow, though, she seems trapped between between deadpan and declamatory, her voice wavering uncharacteristically as it tries to lock in – and this awkwardness emphasises clunkiness in the lyrics, whether they’re sci-fi noir narratives or just recitation of buzzy phrases: “pregnant person… immigrants… intersex…” “sub-sub-prime, sub-basement, sub-3D-print”. All too often it feels like like these are first drafts or even an improv session. It’s glorious that an artist who could be coasting on her alt-rock royalty status is this dedicated to experimentation – but unlike its predecessor, this album feels like an unfinished experiment.
Listen to “Dirty Tech”
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Kim Gordon's new album
I needed to jump in and shine a light on some of the past Kim Gordon music that would have helped this writer to better understand the Play Me album.
If you go back to 1986, Soni Youth put out a record called CICCONE YOUTH, an experimental, beat heavy, electronic experiment, with Kim at the fore. A couple of the tracks on Play Me refer back sonically to that album, especially to the track MACBETH (one of my faves).
Thanks - I do know this, though, and also that SY go back...
...to the no wave scene in NYC where it was completely normal for free jazz, avant-rock, very early hip hop, disco, proto-house etc to exist in the same space. That's why I think it's completely natural for KG to do this! My complaint isn't about authenticity or cultural tourism - I just wish she'd worked on making the hibby-hibby-hibby rap style her own as much as she did with the beats. She comes really close!
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