โBeing cool doesnโt matter that much when climate change is coming after us,โ laughs Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth bassist and vocalist, prolific artist of the avant-garde, bestselling writer, successor of a New York underground pocked by Nico, Warhol, and Patti Smith โ by most standards, one of the coolest women in the world.
Gordon and I are sitting in the lobby of a central London hotel, the thrum of the reception area masking the squalling police sirens outside, discussing the ongoing climate movement disruptions by Extinction Rebellion going on a few streets over. She speaks softly, ruminating in the conversation gaps, though quick to interrogate my throwaway use of the concept of โcoolโ to describe whatโs going on outside. She adds thoughtfully: โWhen I watch CNN โย I was glued all night from jet lag โ all I see is Jane Fonda getting arrested. Itโs about young white girls like Greta Thunberg โย and sheโs great, of course โ but the media isnโt showing us the indigenous people who have been fighting climate change, the Native American people protesting for years.โ
The musician and artist has been both an enduring purveyor and excavator of culture, cool or otherwise; growing up in California and graduating from the LA Otis Art Institute, she broke away for the chaotic creative New York scene and set up there, where she embedded herself as the decades-defining no-wave frontwoman of Sonic Youth with her future husband Thurston Moore, leading the 90s countercultural sound until the bandโs 2011 breakup, along with their marriage. But Gordon has always evaded attempts to align her with contemporary iconography, loathe to giving interviews to promote herself, and eviscerating industry bullshit with withering, astute writing instead. In her searing 2015 memoir, Girl In A Band, she describes herself as a โlowercase rock starโ.
While pop culture exploder and provocateur Andy Warhol remains a vital influence on Gordonโs art, she has in the years since Sonic Youth explored avant-rock in her experimental duo Body/Head with Bill Nace, focused once more on her visual art career with provocative, political exhibitions, and is currently consulting on a television series about a 70s rock band and co-editing a book of womenโs writing on music. Gordonโs irreverent, expansive discography has, across decades, unpacked tough themes from sexual harassment to consumerist commodities even as it shattered the mainstream, and her lifeโs work continues to interrogate what art can do and be. Itโs clear too throughout our conversation that she is most at home talking abstractly about art, culture, and the ills of capitalism, but gets most animated when discussing her daughter, the 25-year-old poet and artist Coco Moore โ a โtotal badass,โ she says. Her enduring perspective culminates in a debut solo record, the recently released No Home Record.
The album maps out some of her well-explored past themes, but ventures into dynamic new realms. For starters, itโs searingly funny, rooted in the transience of Los Angeles โ her home once again after years on the east coast โ and punctuated with observant send-ups of late capitalism, like the sardonically anthemic โAirBnBโ, the spiky rundown of customised car culture and Americana fetishism on โMurdered Outโ. With Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira producer Justin Raisen onboard, the sound hopscotches from footwork to post punk and hip hop โย โPaprika Ponyโ is a startling, hypnotic trap banger you donโt see coming, the intense โEarthquakeโ and โCookie Butterโ showcasing her vocals like never before, both caustic and vulnerable. Below, Gordon discusses No Home Record, capitalist cliches, her wicked humour, and the transience of her once-again home.
As a fellow introvert I sympathise on this one โ what has doing your first proper solo promo run been like? Where do you find your strength?
Kim Gordon: Talking about yourself is really hard, itโs very uncomfortable at times. A lot of people who are shy or introverted are performers. Being on stage becomes relaxing for whatever reason, you allow yourself open vulnerability โย maybe itโs the lights that make you feel alone, or itโs a record youโve lived for so long in. I donโt know if Iโve found that strength yet, totally. But Iโve always seen myself as an artist thatโs making music, over everything else.
How much has the โartistโ versus โmusicianโ identity affected your trajectory?
KG: Playing music was just something I fell into. I did have this noise garage band in Toronto that we made in our media class, then I played with these two girls in New York when I first started. It was in these moments I first felt very free, and that’s why I got pulled into it. A lot of people in post punk didn’t intend to play music. I was influenced by The Factory, Warhol, the Velvet Underground โ what was that? At that time I felt like, instead of making art or commenting about the culture from the outside, we could prod at the mainstream and make comments on the culture from within.
Why did now feel like the right time for your solo album?
KG: Why not? There was no great, majestic thought to it really… I just had some free time [Laughs]. I thought, you know, Iโve been around and I might as well do one. I’d met Justin and we had just done ‘Murdered Out’, and then everything accidentally came together. He’d asked me to sing on someone else’s project, we worked back and forth and collaged it together โย a bit of bass added, some drums, Iโd sent back the vocals. I loved that he was into really extreme sounds, and I really enjoyed this way of working, so I went back and did more. I’d never worked with a producer in such a collaborative way, and it became a successful experiment.
The record experiments with hip hop sounds that youโve not really broached before. How was that?
KG: I always related to hip hopโs way working โย I’m not a real โsinger singerโ, I like the idea of using spoken voice, texture, dynamics, and things like that which you find in hip hop. Building a song up from the rhythm is cool, and mixed with the attitude, itโs cool. It was freeing to explore outside rock โย itโs not where the punk spirit is anymore really. Itโs in hip hop, itโs in Cardi B.
I read that Justin would call you Kimye too!
KG: Heโs hilarious.
Is hip hop and pop where the more progressive ideals play out now, rather than rock?
KG: I wouldn’t say pop. Rap and hip hop yes, but I guess hip hop is the new pop. Rock, as it evolved in the 60s, was the sound of rebellion and it really isn’t that now. Punk in the 70s took over briefly. Indie rock is back to pandering to the inflated sound of corporate music.
So โ east coast or west coast?
KG: Chicago hip hop.
Are you a reader of west coast writers? I feel like the themes of No Home really tap into their themes. I read you were getting into Joan Didion recently.
KG: Yeah. I used to read a lot of Noir like Kem Nunn who wrote Tapping The Source, especially when Sonic Youth was touring. I love Raymond Chandler โย The Long Goodbye, The Big Sleep. Rachel Kushner, Maggie Nelson too. Robert Altman movies also about LA have come to influence me โย I think of LA more in terms of movies, itโs a visual thing for me.
I think thereโs a common thread in that era of west coast Noir that traces the fine line between dreaminess and pure existential dread. Have you felt that since coming back to LA?
KG: Totally. Well, West Hollywood has always been kind of annoying to me because it’s so slick and plastic. LA is this voyeuristic city; itโs looking back at itself in a car mirror, the Hollywood sign is close by. Thereโs a lot to glean from that.
How much is your interest in the avant-garde still influencing your work?
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KG: The whole record to me was an experiment. The music of โAirBnBโ is almost an homage to Arto Lindsay from DNA’s guitar playing.
Do you think about who is consuming the music youโre making now, and how you want people to interrogate the themes?
KG: I’m a consumer, but Iโm also a sociologist. That has always influenced the kind of art I make, but I brought more of those interests into my lyrics for the first time. I got pretty close to merging my music with my art ideas. I always kept my art and music quite separate before, whichย I find a bit weird in a way, as this is probably the most commercial thing I’ve ever been involved with. It was a new challenge, I donโt care about alienating anyone anymore. I feel like I’ve always been solely becoming that person, but Iโm a slow developer and I take my time. I don’t know if I’ll make another record, so I had to put it all on this.
When making this record were you thinking about how differently people consume music at all? Spotify playlists, YouTube algorithms.
KG: Itโs all about the playlists now. It’s hard to actually find a whole album. People make more money with these long, bloated albums. When I first started I thought I was going to make a lot of 10-second songs โ it’s really fucked up.
Tierra Whackโs Whack World is an excellently brief 15 minutes long.
KG: That’s very cool โย can you write down her name for me? I went to a listening session of Perfume Genius’s record recently, and it is such a collaged record, long and short pieces. Thatโs interesting.
Where do you see your music fitting into this era?
KG: It’s always a funny thing putting a record out, especially now, because I’m not going to play until next year when I put a band together. It felt like putting something out into a void. I thought about this in the past with Sonic Youth too โ once a record is done, you’ve mastered it, listened to it over and over, then it becomes another thing when you perform it live, the songs take on a different life. You live in them. Now, itโs feeling more abstract. I made this thing, and now I’m doing all of these interviews around the thing.
What is the song that you let yourself live in the most?
KG: โPaprika Ponyโ is maybe my favourite song, and itโs the one that made itself. Justin’s brother Jeremiah, who is also a producer and DJ, came by the studio one day. We asked him if he had any beats we could use and he played this. I liked that it had too much space in it, the atmosphere. I immediately realised that I could easily do a vocal. It’s like a little movie to me, pretty abstract โ a modern-day Adam and Eve wandering around the gardens on their cell phones.
Is a warning against the techy, twee but sinister dystopias weโre building the albumโs message?
KG: Itโs about the capitalism thatโs at war with itself right now. It’s about the capitalism that Donald Trump has made but is actually pretty bad at, itโs bananas. I have a weird fantasy that he’s going to destroy capitalism. Consumerism will continue to eat itself until then. Everything in the culture is getting faster and faster, but you have to live a long time to see the change from the outset.
โHungry Babyโ continues a thread of your music from SY days that confronted sexual harassment. When you were starting out, your very presence disrupted the music industry boyโs club. Do you think music is ready for its own #MeToo moment?
KG: I think it has happened in some incidents, but rather than isolated moments, I think thereโs something so insidious and dark about how sexism is so ingrained in the scene still, in its very genres. I met a guy starting something in LA recently and he said, โI think you look pretty good for your age.’ I looked around, like, this room full of people โ did anyone else catch that? Where do you even begin to break up that boyโs club.
No Home Record feels like weโre seeing more of your wicked humour, too.
KG: It has been a necessary tool for me. Go back to Shakespeareโs comedy, where the fool is half-mad, half-wise. I mean, the director who did Joker also did The Hangover. The best comedians have duplicity. You want to create that uncomfortable space or poke the elephant in the room, whatever it is. For me itโs songs like โAirBnBโ, where home becomes this fantasy that no-one really lives.ย Itโs not ironic as much as it is embracing that attitude of, ‘What if everyone thought this was as wonderful as the weird, utopian advertising is purporting it to be?’ What does that really sound or feel like? Is it embarrassing to say out loud? These cliches surround us all.
I love the album promo artwork. Whatโs your favourite of those dumb cliches?
KG: There was one in this AirBnB where we did the photoshoot, it was written on driftwood and it said ‘Let the adventure begin’. Pick one, let it fulfil some weekend fantasy! Warhol and pop art have always influenced my thoughts on this kind of culture, non-culture โ the outside is the inside, the inside is the outside.
