The Collective
by Kim Gordon
Bassist/singer Kim Gordon brought a feminist, progressive art school ethos to Sonic Youth, the innovative and influential New York band that broke up in 2011. Astutely plundering New York avant-garde music and pop culture, she set them apart as much as former husband Thurston Moore’s electrifying and sometimes chaotic guitar energy.
Her gritty electronica-cum-alt-rock 2019 solo debut No Home Record confirmed her as a courageous, uncompromising experimentalist with impeccable post-punk and art-rock credentials. Its discordant industrial clashes and No Wave noise-pop came with dispassionate spoken word, ironic attacks on consumerism and constrained anger: “I’m calm … You didn’t even know who I became.”
Setting aside her improvised live At Issue album with avant-guitarist Loren Connors – recorded in 2014, released in 2022 – The Collective, again with No Home Record’s producer Justin Raisen, deepens her uncompromising art, which is closer to John Cale’s demanding, declamatory work than her former band.
Over grinding industrial noise Bye Bye lists items to pack in advance of departure (“Sleeping pills, sneakers, boots, black dress, white tee, turtleneck, iBook, power cord, medications …”) and I Don’t Miss My Mind delivers speak-sing poetry over grimy loops. She applies cynicism to life in Los Angeles on Psychedelic Orgasm (“LA is an art scene”) and takes a blunt blade to failed males on the emotional and sonically bruising I’m a Man: “Dropped out of college, don’t have a degree, I can’t get a date, it’s not my fault … Don’t call me toxic just ‘cause I like your butt”.
At 70, Kim Gordon sketches an unsettling place few would want to visit. But The Collective is the extraordinary, if lacerating, exploration of a dystopian world and her tuned-in psyche.
Visions
by Norah Jones
After the unexpected success of her 2002 debut Come Away With Me – a staple at dinner parties, restaurants and mainstream radio – many wrote off Norah Jones’ subsequent albums as more bagatelles from someone who’d stumbled on a formula between lounge jazz and lightweight pop.
But Texas-raised New Yorker Jones made country music with The Little Willies (their original about Lou Reed cow-tipping is fun), and she collaborated with Danger Mouse and Jack White, Ray Charles and Willie Nelson, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Foo Fighters and OutKast, among many others. Those artists respected Jones in a way the casually dismissive didn’t.
Her ninth solo album, Visions, is produced by Leon Michels, who co-founded the soul-funk Dap Kings, Lee Fields’ Expressions and tours with the Black Keys. Here Jones moves into low-key, old school R’n’B (on the country-flavoured swing of Queen of the Sea), dark emotional thoughts coupled with retro-pop (Running), unvarnished country-rock (Staring at the Wall), Southern country (I Just Want to Dance) and a disturbing, melodically unanchored title track with Hispanic horns and a grim metaphor: “Visions in my head and everyone is dead … it’s time to say goodbye to your world.”
Producer Michels and Jones have captured her diversity on an album of easy charm (the lightweight pop of Paradise and On My Way), left turns (the moody Alone With My Thoughts) and that lyrical depth too often overlooked.
