Kim Gordon – ‘The Collective’ review: experimental trap from Sonic Youth icon

7 March, 2024

Kim Gordon

“Thank you Kim Gordon,” one caption put it, “putting out bangers in ur 70s, now I’m not scared to grow old.” The former Sonic Youth singer and bassist has become an unlikely TikTok smash thanks to her dissonant recent single ‘BYE BYE’, a punishing blast of blown-out bass and ice-cold trap beats. Battered by the noise, Gordon sounds unmoved as she coolly recounts the shit that needs to get done: “Buy suitcase, pants to the cleaner… Call the vet, call the groomer / Call the dog sit-terrr.”

It’s a thrillingly avant-grade performance that’s also pretty accessible and catchy, a trick repeated throughout her second solo album, ‘The Collective’, on which it appears. Here the 70-year-old balances her less than commercial sensibilities with crunchily on-trend production and relatable lyrics about rotten capitalism and fragile masculinity – if these sound like themes she explored during Sonic Youth’s ‘90s heyday, it only goes to show how little has changed.

The bracing production comes courtesy of Justin Raisen, who helmed the album’s predecessor, ‘No Home Record’, and has helped to steer the likes of Lil Yachty into unchartered territory. Gordon’s latest vision is crystallised on ‘I Don’t Miss My Mind’, which pairs a muscular beat with insidious synth as she half-raps about “crying on the subway” and “drywall for days”; vignettes of everyday life broken up like jagged shards of glass.

In her former band, she often stood at a disdainful remove from American culture, but now burrows under the skin of her subjects. Take second single ‘I’m A Man’, on which she flips Sonic Youth’s ‘Kool Thing’ (“Are you gonna liberate us girls from white, male, corporate oppression?”) to play the kind of entitled sad sack who stormed the Capitol in 2021: “It’s not my fault I was born a man… Don’t call me toxic.” The twist is that he seems to be hiding a more feminine side, a tragedy mirrored in the oppressive soundscape that crushes Gordon’s lyrics.

Not all of these experiments quite come off: the industrial clang of ‘It’s Dark Inside’, on which she drawls, “they don’t teach clit in school / Like do Lit”, veers close to ‘Yeezus’ parody. It’s notable, though, how contemporary her distorted art-punk sounds, given the ongoing grunge resurgence and the fact that Olivia Rodrigo’s taking The Breeders on tour this year. Despite her new album’s title, here is an icon who’s spent more than four decades making truly individual art.