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“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.
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.
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There’s a deliberate defiance in the title for Lucy Rose’s fifth album, ‘This Ain’t The Way You Go Out’. Speaking to NME earlier this year, she detailed the health issues she faced post-pregnancy that left her with eight broken vertebrae in her back: “Life was definitely upside down – I couldn’t walk or move, and breathing was excruciating”.
She credits a community of musicians – Paul Weller, US rapper Logic and producer Kwes – as encouraging her to create with freedom as she navigated her recovery. ‘This Ain’t The Way You Go Out’, then, is less about bold statements but recognising the quiet, personal victories on that journey. On ‘Over When it’s Over’ she sings that they’ll find “our way through” an embattled situation with both grit and grace. It’s particularly moving after ‘Could You Help Me’’s appeal for some kind of healing: “Now I’m learning / How terribly lonely illness is / On a hard day / Has there ever been another way?”
Now, she brings in a dancey shuffle to ‘Could You Help Me’ and ‘Life’s Too Short’ and a fearless veracity on ‘The Racket’; these are some of the most interesting and sonically varied songs of her entire career. This is, one hopes, the start of an intriguing new chapter.
