Kim Gordon Primavera Sound Los Angeles on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. (Photo by Pooneh Ghana)
There are musicians who enter the studio with every song perfectly planned out, and then there is Kim Gordon.
“It just kind of happened that way, you know?” she says of the denser, noisier sound of “The Collective,” her second solo album that arrived this month.
And some variation of that answer – about lyrics, about deciding to work with producer and collaborator Justin Raisen, about the influence of her work as a visual artist – recurred throughout a recent call with Gordon to talk about the album and The Collective Tour that brings her to the Regent Theater in Los Angeles on March 27 and the Ventura Music Hall in Ventura on March 29.
(Gordon will also appear at the Los Angeles Festival of Movies, which takes place April 4-7, in conversation with writer Rachel Kushner about the city and its cinema.)
At 70, the former bassist-singer for the New York City post-punk alt-rockers Sonic Youth is getting some of the best reviews of her career. Just check out the headlines:
“Kim Gordon is at the Peak of Her Powers,” the New Yorker declared. “Four Decades Into Her Career, Kim Gordon Is Still Exploding Our Expectations,” wrote Rolling Stone, while the Washington Post review announced, “Noise-rock star enters rap zone.”
Yes, the “rap zone,” and don’t worry, we’ll explain.
Making music in LA
Gordon, who was raised in Los Angeles, and graduated from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1977, moved to New York City to pursue an art career and soon fell into a life in music with Sonic Youth. After 16 studio albums, Sonic Youth split up in 2011 – her marriage to bandmate Thurston Moore ended that year as well – after which Gordon made several experimental guitar rock albums in Body/Head, a duo with guitarist Bill Nace.
Eight years ago, Gordon moved back to Los Angeles, where fate brought her together with Raisen, writer-producer for rap and pop artists such as Drake, Charli XCX, Lil Yachty, Yves Tumor, and Angel Olsen.
“I met Justin through his brother, and he kind of bugged me to make a record,” Gordon says of her eventual collaborator on “The Collective” and its predecessor, “No Home Record,” her 2019 solo debut.
“I didn’t really have that intention,” she says of working with Raisen. “I already had this experimental duo with Bill Nace, and I was kind of focusing more on art-making.”
Add to that, her leeriness about the L.A. music world; to Gordon, it seemed like the flipside of the downtown New York City scene, which still felt like her musical home. She thought of Los Angeles as a place where it can take “10 people to make a song,” she says.
“It’s kind of the opposite of how I fell into music post-punk. You know, it’s just a much more organic sort of music-making in New York, that scene. It’s more kind of art-oriented and less commercial, basically.
“But I thought, ‘Well, I should be open,’” Gordon says, and laughs. “Why do I have this prejudice, blah, blah.”
Raisen sent her tracks built…
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