Kim Gordon began her musical career singing and playing bass and guitar in the New York band Sonic Youth, which was popular in the 1980s and 1990s alternative scene. After three decades, they broke up in 2011 when Gordon and Thurston Moore, her bandmate and husband, divorced. Now Kim Gordon is back with a second solo record, The Collective, which combines her signature noisy sound with distorted trap beats and stream-of-consciousness rapping.
The album’s title is inspired by Jennifer Egan's novel The Candy House, where characters upload their unconscious minds to a social media platform called the Collective Conscious.
Gordon says that concept reminds her of what happens when playing live. “When you're a performer, you meld with the audience… Sometimes you can really feel they're listening to you, and there is this symbiotic sort of relationship. … It's like being in church.”
The provocatively titled “Psychedelic Orgasm” on Gordon’s new record is about her hometown of Los Angeles. She moved back a little over a decade ago after spending much of her adulthood on the East Coast. Before that, she was living in Western Massachusetts and commuting to work in New York. After many years in the city, she says she couldn’t afford NY and missed certain things about LA, such as jasmine and eucalyptus trees.
“LA is such a visual city to drive around, and so much distance. … I've always liked LA because it does have this dark side to it. Otherwise, it would be super uninteresting. …It looks one way on the outside, but underneath it's different.”
Gordon’s new album also references her late brother Keller, who died a few years ago. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, lived in a residential treatment facility, and never had a job, but saw himself as a poet.
Gordon wrote an essay about her brother last year, revealing that he was cruel to her growing up, despite her yearning for his approval. But when his mental illness worsened in adulthood, she helped take care of him until the end of his life.
“He was very eccentric always,” Gordon recalls. “And we used to actually jam in the living room. He had a recorder, and we had this African drum and a gong. And we had free jazz records. He influenced me — trying to get approval and continuously wanting to be creative and making things.
Gordon explains that it wasn’t always easy. “I would sometimes get fooled into believing he was rational. So I would try and have an actual discussion or argument about something, and then he would just revert to button pushing, and I would fall for it all the time.”
Still, she recently published a book of his drawings and writings. It was an effort to salvage something of his memory because “he had so much potential that was completely lost.”
After this current tour, Gordon plans to focus on her art, and she’ll have some exhibitions opening next year. She says she might do some recording, but isn’t sure about releasing another full record.
“I'd rather just make a song and put it out.”