Kim Gordon: The Collective (digital outlets)

If you hadn't already twigged onto what Kim Gordon brought to Sonic Youth, the innovative and influential band which broke up in 2011, her autobiography Girl in a Band shone the light on her serious intellectual smarts and tenacity.

And her recent solo albums just confirm all of that, and then some.

Her gritty electronica-cum-alt.rock 2019 solo debut No Home Record illustrated her courage as an uncompromising experimentalist with impeccable post-punk and art-rock credentials, a woman who had worked with Yoko Ono as an equal.

The discordant industrial clashes and No Wave noise-pop on No Home Record came with dispassionate spoken word, ironic attacks on consumerism and constrained anger: “I'm calm . . . You didn't even know who I became”. 

As a bassist/singer Gordon brought a feminist assertion and progressive art school ethos to Sonic Youth and by 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.

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 and Ono vocals to life in Los Angeles on Psychedelic Orgasm (“L.A. 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.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here