Kim Gordon: The Collective review – so close to the edge it sometimes falls off

Everyone always says Kim Gordon’s cool, so let’s get that out of the way – it may be tiresome to read repeatedly but it’s true. The Sonic Youth bassist turned California visual artist’s first solo album, No Home Record (2019), was very good and incredibly cool. Not just “cool for a 66-year-old mom”, but a remarkable work full of vim and mordant fury, thrillingly modern hip-hop post-punk. Cool as Leslie Winer fronting the Velvet Underground. Four years on, The Collective similarly strives to extract magic from chaos, yet is nowhere near as successful.

The single Bye Bye is excellent, seemingly a two-decade-old holiday packing list (“iBook, power cord, medications”) set to grinding industrial trap, with a sweet shoutout to Gordon’s late brother, Keller. I’m a Man and Psychedelic Orgasm are OK, vivid depictions of masculine toxicity and acid tripping. Unfortunately, Gordon’s spiky, staccato delivery is too often drowned in distortion and diminished by tune-dodging cacophony. So many songs, such as Trophies, are tense yet torpid, and when the airless intensity clears briefly on Shelf Warmer it’s too late. Perhaps the risk of making music that sounds so close to the edge is that sometimes you fall off. Hopefully she’ll try again soon though.