Musician and visual artist Kim Gordon has released ‘I’m a Man,’ the latest preview track from her second solo album, The Collective (March 8th, Matador Records). Atop a dark, churning soundscape, Gordon ruminates on the lost role of “traditional masculinity” and the role of capitalism in its demise.
An evocative video for ‘I’m a Man’ is also out today, serving as a perfect visual accompaniment to the song’s expressive lyrics and pulsing sound. It stars Coco Gordon Moore and Conor Fay and was directed by filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, best known for writing and directing the films Listen Up Philip and Her Smell.
Last month, Gordon released the lead single from the forthcoming album, ‘BYE BYE,’ along with a video also starring Coco Gordon Moore. It was directed by photographer and filmmaker Clara Balzary, with cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt.
ACCLAIM FOR ‘BYE BYE’
“For decades in Sonic Youth and on her own, Gordon’s exuded her own kind of avant-garde cool, but forging her own lane through thrashing, trash-rap? We are not ready for this shaking hell.” – NPR
“a marvelously weird left-turn” – PAPER MAGAZINE
“”BYE BYE” is a fucking banger” – CONSEQUENCE
“There are sounds on “Bye Bye” that never existed on a Sonic Youth record, but the song still works as one more sign that Gordon has always been decades ahead of the curve. Even now, we’re not close to catching up with her.” – STEREOGUM
“As rappers search to redefine rock stardom, Gordon is offering a path forward simply by reasserting her pedigree.” – FADER
“a potent distillation of the multifaceted nature of Gordon as a songwriter, auteur, and iconoclast.” – UPROXX
““Bye Bye,” is a spoken-word, nightmarish wonder.” – AMERICAN SONGWRITER
The Collective:
There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space.
Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.
Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. Can I love you with my eyes open? “It’s Dark Inside.” Haunted by synthesized voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears.
We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed. She sings “Shelf Warmer” so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop, assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a return policy. But – novel idea – A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption.
I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. ‘I Don’t Miss My Mind.’ The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title ‘BYE BYE.’ The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more.
She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list.
I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers. She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?
- Written by English artist Josephine Pryde
Recorded in Gordon’s native Los Angeles, The Collective follows her 2019 full-length debut No Home Record and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisin’s damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon’s intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation and sensory overload.
The Collective track list:
- BYE BYE
- The Candy House
- I Don’t Miss My Mind
- I’m a Man
- Trophies
- It’s Dark Inside
- Psychedelic Orgasm
- Tree House
- Shelf Warmer
- The Believers
- Dream Dollar
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