Released: 08/03/24
With sophomore album The Collective, the erstwhile Sonic Youth vocalist and bassist Kim Gordon delivers yet more of the fantastic experimental industrial/noise music that made 2019 debut No Home Record such a blast. And I use ‘blast’ advisedly, for there is a sense of playful mischief everywhere on The Collective, which is possibly a direct consequence of the freedom that comes from leaving a storied, decades-spanning group – not to mention separating from the leader of that same band – and discovering that you’re now beholden to no one and can do whatever the hell you want.
Wisely, Gordon realises that the best way to reassert her creative agency after being a member of one of the most pioneering and influential post-punk/avant-rock guitar bands of all time, is to make a completely different noise altogether; and so instead she conjures thrilling blown-out dub and trap constructions (co-created with producer Justin Raisen), variously spliced with fragments of churning Ministry-esque metal guitar. While redolent of younger experimental musicians such as Puce Mary (AKA Frederikke Hoffmeier), and Pharmakon (AKA Margaret Chardiet), Gordon takes a different tack vocally to those artists, who tend to bury their distortion-laden vocals low in the mix; instead, she places her trademark erotically-charged cool-as-ice sing-talk voice (which was so important to Sonic Youth’s aesthetic) relatively clean and high in the mix, enabling us to revel in her brilliantly caustic Burroughsian monologues.