Spectreview: Kim Gordon – No Home Record

-CYAN-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“Every day, every day, every day
I feel bad for you
I feel bad for me
Get your life back, yoga”

If you take one listen to this record and instantly discredit it as completely unlistenable trash that’s a product of over thirty years of babying critical scaffolding, well, nobody would blame you for making such a grave mistake. Kim Gordon’s been fighting claims of pretentiousness for her entire musical career, and that includes her project with Julie Cafritz (Free Kitten) and her other project with Bill Nace (Body/Head). Fortunately, she’s been given the benefit of the doubt in ways so many other misunderstood artists (including longtime inspiration Yoko Ono) have never been afforded. Of course, it could just be lingering affection from her days has Sonic Youth’s soft-lit beacon of cool, but I like to think it’s because she’s succeeded in ways that Ono once tried to accomplish: introduce challenging compelling art that’s largely accepted by the mainstream. It helps that she’s consistently able to present clear arguments in her work, demonstrating a skill that was ever present in the New York art scene she cut her teeth in. Before New York (like most cities) turned into the safe, faceless utopia of modern-day capitalism it is now, galleries were places of grand artistic statement, rooms where an artist’s works were intentionally connected by a concept. Like the album format, it was originally an ideal way for artists to say whatever they wanted through their art, and legendary visual artists like Gerhard Richter and Barbara Kruger made their name on their defining conceptual galleries. But also like the album format, the idea of the gallery has degraded to a largely commercial enterprise, taking the form of small shops tailor-made for newly-affluent gentrified neighborhoods (though it’s ironic how the gears of gentrification commonly start to turn with the arrival of the artist en masse).

Gordon’s work consistently expounds on how capitalism affects American city life, from sexual dynamics to social behavior to artistic discourse. Her particular fascination with her hometown of Los Angeles has long been documented, its plastic edges and blinding architectural structures coloring her output as a visual artist and as a songwriter. For her very first solo album after decades of collaborative projects, it makes sense to make her hometown (and current area of residence) the focal point, and No Home Record fittingly reads like as a love letter to her grandest inspiration. The album crosses her signature atonal arrangements with facsimiles of current trends: trap triplets, subwoofer blasts, even a sugary pop rush or two. One could call it trend-riding, but Gordon’s long been involved with crossing the mundane with the unconventional, and on the whole this feels like a new take on her signature point of view. There are some reaches back to her touchstones (the cyclonic “Hungry Baby” feels at times like a reimagining of The Stooges intensely-nihilistic “1970”, while “Earthquake” can’t escape those classic Sonic Youth chord voicings) but for the most part it’s a reassuringly fresh collection of music. For a noise record, it’s also peculiarly accessible, retaining a lot of the genre’s compelling ugliness but sanding down its abrasive edges. The album’s weakest moment, the sluggish hard rock pastiche of “Murdered Out,” is also perhaps its most cliché, being held together by its rather boneheaded bass melody. Otherwise, Gordon sounds genuinely inspired throughout, building up her album as she would a gallery showing: tons of styles pulled into arrangements and tied together by that iconic shapeshifting voice.

With four decades worth of practice, Gordon has learned how to control her voice like its own instrument, and even though it’s still not attempting anything approaching conventional melody, her performances here are among her best work. Every rasp and croak is thoughtfully uttered, with each sustained note or warbled word tinting the music like paint. It’s a pleasure in itself to examine how it changes across each song, how it’s so effective a provoking a sensory response. “Paprika Pony” transcends its murky instrumental hip-hop beginnings into something sickly sensual; her terrifying affected gasps drown in the goopy GAS-like beat on “Don’t Play It”; her alien-like pronunciation of “Cookie Butter” makes the title feel like a punchline for a pitch-black joke. Her co-producer, Justin Raisen, makes a significant impact as well, and together they deck out that voice in as many bells and whistles as to get the point across. On “Get Yr Life Back” (a title that may or may not allude to her old band) we might as well be inside her mouth, as every wet slap and tongue movement leaps out of the speakers Gordon sounds like she’s throwing her entire body into the music, delivering career-defining performances as a result. As with many experimental records, you might still need to be on its wavelength to appreciate No Home Record fully, but its not often you see risks like this being taken by an artist who technically should be collecting AARP checks. Then again, Gordon’s been breaking stereotypes since she was first introduced to the public consciousness, and to see her continue to break them, by retaining her cool after so much time, is truly a gift.

Recommended for over-caffeinated people watching.