The sickest album of the year
Kim Gordon on her incredible new LP, a cherished ‘80s Gerhard Richter piece, X-girl grails, & more unbeatable topics
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— Jonah & Erin
Kim Gordon is in an elite upper tier of Spyplane Musical Heroes. She sang & played bass in Sonic Youth — one of the greatest-ever American bands — and to this day we will drop everything at HQ to groove out to “Bull in the Heather,” “Jams Run Free,” “Paprika Pony,” “Kool Thing,” and other catchy, off-kilter, career-spanning Kim-fronted bangers.
Sonic Youth broke up in 2011, which is a bummer. But that didn’t stop Kim from continuing to craft heat across various media. I (Jonah) first met her for an interview in 2015, when her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out. She took me to a chill old diner called the Apple Pan on the west side of L.A., her hometown, where she’d been eating since she was a kid. Since then she’s shown paintings, played with the band Body/Head, and released her debut solo album, 2019’s No Home Record, which was dark, weird & very vibey.
Next month Kim will turn 71 and — proving that her “swag longevity” is outta control — she just put out a fantastic new solo LP called The Collective, digging deeper into the intersection of rap beats & distortion squalls she explored on the last record. The first single, “BYE BYE,” went crazy, serving notice that something major was brewing…
And now that we’ve heard the whole record??
The Collective is our pick for the sickest album of 2024. 11 songs, 40 minutes, starts with a punishing slapper, ends with another one, zero skips in between. A “better” album might come out by December 31 — but we’re confident that The Collective will be sicker! It’s heavy, dank, transfixing, wry, frosty, hot, ~SpOoKy~ and features extremely hard drum programming that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Playboi Carti album? It’s wild how good Kim sounds on beats like this, creating her own warped version of rap-rock with the help of collaborator Justin Raisen (also known for producing the coolest track on the last Drake album).
I was stoked to tap in with Kim the other day via an encrypted SpyLink Connection to talk about keeping your ears open; going in the opposite direction of mellow; cherished handpainted Gerhard Richter jawns; her NFS ‘90s-era X-girl grails; taking inspiration for bars from Cardi B; and more…
Blackbird Spyplane: It can be so hard to hold on to curiosity and openness over time. But you somehow manage to make new music that feels recognizably yours and yet new and exploratory — rather than just settling into one fixed shape and doing impressions of yourself. How do you stay plugged in and keep up on new s**t?
Kim Gordon: “I don’t keep up on new s**t, actually! Unless someone sends me something. I listen to my record collection, basically.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I loved “Paprika Pony” and “Sketch Artist” on your last solo record, and it’s very cool to hear you going even deeper into that kind of dank, heavy, noise-rap sound this time. This is not a “mellow late-period record.”
Kim Gordon: “No, it’s an intense record. I get more inspired by rhythm than melody. It’s the kind of singer I am — or the kind of non-singer singer I am. I’ve always liked aspects of certain hip-hop, and the idea of using the language of music itself. Recycling it, in a way. So I basically just put things I like in the record — beats, dissonant guitar, and my vocal and lyric style. Justin calls it ‘abstract poetry,’ but I think that’s giving it too much credit. Sometimes he calls it, ‘Your f**ked-up poetry,’ and I prefer that.”
Blackbird Spyplane: The lyrics on “BYE BYE” do resemble found poetry, like you’re reciting a packing list and letting all these seemingly inert and unrelated words enliven each other. There’s a phrase early on — “cigarettes for Keller” — that adds mystery and poignancy, though, because Keller was your older brother, he was in a psychiatric hospital for most of your life, and he died last year. Is that song a list of things you were packing on a trip to see him?
Kim Gordon: “It’s a combination of fiction and non-fiction, let’s say — mostly non-fiction, but certain words I threw in because I liked the sound of them.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Milkthistle is a great word. You also shout out Bella Freud, YSL and Eckhaus Latta, which is tight.
Kim Gordon: “That’s partly because Bella Freud gave me a couple shirts that I wore on the last tour, and I have this YSL belt I wear every day. But really I just thought it would be funny to shout out designer names the way some rappers do. Like Cardi B, who I really like, on ‘Bodak Yellow.’ She has the greatest line about Louboutins where she’s, like, ‘these are red bottoms — these are bloody shoes.’”
Blackbird Spyplane: You’ve known Marc Jacobs forever, too — there’s footage of young Chloë Sevigny walking in one of his Perry Ellis shows all the way back in the Sonic Youth “Sugar Kane” video, from 1992.
Kim Gordon: “That’s right around when we first met Marc, when he was at Perry Ellis. I still have a couple pieces from maybe Marc’s first or second season at his own line.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I’m curious, you used to post all these photographs of “flung” things lying on the ground on Instagram — why’d you stop? I got a kick out of those.
Kim Gordon: “I know, I forget to do them. I should keep doing them. Some things I found flung, but I did construct a few.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Same as with the BYE BYE lyrics — mixing the found and the made.
Kim Gordon: “Haha, yeah. But not, like, A.I. fooling.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Have you played around with A.I. at all?
Kim Gordon: “No. I’ve seen stuff that’s kind of crazy and kind of scary. I’m sure it’ll be beneficial for some people, and a disaster for others. The ramifications can be kind of frightening as far as putting people out of work. But, you know, the thing is, the A.I. images I’ve seen look too perfect. That’s the giveaway. I’m sure they’re trying to find a way to make it look less perfect, but maybe it’ll always look like, ‘distressed,’ the way filters on photos look.”
Blackbird Spyplane: It’s amazing how sophisticated the eye is at very quickly telling real wear from fake wear, whether it’s pre-distressed jeans or a ‘pre-distressed’ image. Speaking of cool thrashed old s**t, one of the flung things you photographed was a pair of roasted old boots signed by Andy Warhol (below right). What’s the story with those?
Kim Gordon: “Those are vintage canvas boots I’ve had since before I moved to New York City. Warhol was in L.A. signing things, and people brought all kinds of things you can imagine, like soup cans. I took the boots to be signed, because they looked like those old-fashioned shoes he’d designed. Warhol signed them for me and initialed them, and when I moved to New York I wore them all the time.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Do you own tons of things like that? You’ve crossed paths with, and befriended, so many artists over the years.
Kim Gordon: “I do have some nice art, yeah. The one thing that I would grab if I had to run out of the house in an earthquake is a 7-inch called ‘Tri-Star,’ by the artist Isa Genzken. It’s a recording of airplane motor, and she asked me to do a cover for it, in like 1980, ‘81 or something, so I did this blue metallic spray paint paper cover. But the thing I’d save is, Gerhard Richter also made this handmade black glossy card cover for it, and I have one of those.”
Blackbird Spyplane: D*mn!
Kim Gordon: “This is Gerhard’s (above). It’s just a black sleeve, and then on one side of the record he painted the vinyl.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I gotta say, I really love the sound of a small airplane engine overhead. It’s a very hypnoptic, droning frequency — kind of ambient adjacent.
Kim Gordon: “I like the sound in the bathroom of an airplane.”
Blackbird Spyplane: All right, finally, I wanted to ask — you did an enormous closet sale in L.A. last year, selling off a bunch of your old clothes. Was that at all sad, watching these former pieces of yourself scatter off in different directions?
Kim Gordon: “No, it felt good. I’ll probably do it again this year.”
Blackbird Spyplane: What would you never get rid of? Old X-girl jawns?
Kim Gordon: “I have some Marc Jacobs dresses and Rodarte dresses that I’m not sure what to do with, but I know I wouldn’t sell them. And yeah, I have a s**tload of X-girl stuff I’m not gonna sell. One time I went through it all with my daughter, Coco, and some of the things were really wild. Like, we did these outfits that almost look like Burger King uniforms? There’s some cool jeans, too, with a long zipper that goes up the side — they’re the only thing I still wear from X-girl. Most of it is in a storage unit. It’ll go in my archives hahaha.”
Listen to Kim’s new album, The Collective, which came out on Friday and is phenomenal, here. Kim is on IG here.
I just listened today to that album. Had loaded it on my "to listen" playlist back on Friday. Really enjoyed it. And loved "It's Dark Inside". Great interview!!
Listening to Bye Bye as I'm reading this.