Neuguitars 2024 #13 Mrs. Coolness is back. The Collective by Kim Gordon
Kim Gordon (kimaltheagordon.com)
Kim Gordon has been one of the most influential and iconic figures in the alternative music scene of recent decades. Born in 1953 in Rochester, New York, Gordon rose to fame as a founding member of the legendary band Sonic Youth, in which she served as bassist, guitarist and lead vocalist. Kim Gordon, with her charismatic presence and distinctive style, was a central figure in the band's image: her incisive voice and her cryptic lyrics, in fact, contributed to defining the sonic aesthetic of the band.
In addition to his role in Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon has long had a successful solo career, collaborating with a wide range of artists on various musical projects. Her influence now extends beyond the world of music, with her commitment to visual art, fashion and writing.
Kim Gordon is a now a real style icon, seemingly effortlessly embodying a cool aesthetic that has inspired many in the world of fashion and pop culture. An aesthetic that we cannot fail to notice in her recent album, the second of her solo career, entitled “The Collective”. If her first work "No Home Record" was the result of songs written in different periods, revealing itself as a polyphonically ambiguous, personal, cultural, media album, "The Collective" instead presents great sonic cohesion, with a loaded, heavy and at the same time sound same time pop.
At the age of 70, Gordon may no longer be able to present herself as an integral innovator, but she certainly excels in her ability to absorb external interference, incorporating contemporaneity into her own world, creating a personal transversal synthesis of what is truly interesting in the world of today's music. Producer Justin Raisen, already present in "NoHome Record", manages to create a saturated mix, balancing electro hip-hop waste with the heavy distortion of the guitars, which continue to be there but do not sound like the protagonists as they are transfigured, incorporated and deformed in electronic sounds.
Gordon's declaimed singing style is taken to the extreme. Her voice, far from any virtuosity, sounds alienated, impassive, insensitive, listless. The songs, eleven tracks for approximately 41 minutes of music, are more like monologues that represent multiple streams of consciousness, conceptual artistic performances that eschew any hypothesis of melody and which we find in the videos (works by Clara Balzary, “Bye Bye”, Alex Ross Perry, “I'm a man”, and Vice Cooler and Gordon herself, “Psychedelic Orgasm”, with the presence of her daughter Coco Moore), which accompany the production of the album and which always turn towards that independent underground approach, those forms of poetic abstractionism DIY that we are used to since the days of Sonic Youth.
Ultimately, with “The Collective” Kim Gordon proves that she is much more than just a musician: she is a cultural icon who has left an indelible mark on music, art and fashion. Her creativity, her determination and her independent spirit continue to inspire and influence artists around the world. Does this seem too much to you, at seventy years old? I'm sure she'll be a bomb live.