Kim Gordon The Collective LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 5/5 Sonics in the July/August 2024 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Legendary musician and multi-disciplinary artist Kim Gordon returns with her second solo album, The Collective, on Matador.

Recorded in her native Los Angeles, The Collective follows the Sonic Youth bassist/vocalist/guitarist's 2019 full-length debut No Home Record and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisen's damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon's intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation and sensory overload.

"On this record, I wanted to express the absolute craziness I feel around me right now," says Gordon. "This is a moment when nobody really knows what truth is, when facts don't necessarily sway people, when everyone has their own side, creating a general sense of paranoia. To soothe, to dream, escape with drugs, TV shows, shopping, the internet, everything is easy, smooth, convenient, branded. It made me want to disrupt, to follow something unknown, maybe even to fail."

Lead track "BYE BYE" is driven by a snaking bassline which guides listeners through a haunting packing list and features an accompanying video starring Coco Gordon Moore, directed by photographer and filmmaker Clara Balzary, with cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt.

The former Sonic Youth member delivers knife-edged beats and hypnotic character studies that feel like the essence of her entire body of work.

The Collective is an unsettling record that is incessantly confrontational, yet I always want it to loop back to the beginning when it ends.