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It might sound disrespectful to marvel at the open-mindedness of an artist given her venerable age, but the intentions are pure.
This world moves so quickly, even from an artistic and social standpoint. Who hasn't felt a sense of inadequacy or felt outdated, those internal self-sabotages common to many, I think.
While the self-saboteurs fear grasping something, the class of 1953 Kim Gordon grabs 2024, observes it with a hint of astonishment and bites into it.
I've read studies on the human brain that highlight how challenging it is for an individual past a certain age to adapt to the new, to discover, to question themselves. Daunting. Why write about Gordon's age? Because Gordon and her age are enviable, indeed.
And so the Diva of sonic youth relies for the second time on producer Justin Raisen, her adventure companion in the previous No Home Record, and the two upset the expectations of the faithful even more than before.
In The Collective there are no safe supports or emergency exits, much like a Gaspar Noé.
You'll hear typical sounds from trap, from phonk that's all the rage on TikTok, from hip hop. But fear not; she moves and expands at will, disembowels contemporaneity. She's not an artist bent to market trends, but sounds bent to the will of the austere. And she does it with the integrity that has characterized her for four decades, so she deserves trust.
The guitars appear briefly in fits of madness and the lyrics are more cut-up, lists of objects and references to daily life, to sexuality reminiscent of some ancient episodes of Sonic Youth.
The record proceeds confidently and menacingly between beats created by Raisen and the inspiration of the novel The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, dear to Gordon. The dystopian meets the reality of the algorithm, that's the theme. Feminism is also touched on in I'm a Man which proves to be the most convincing.
This pink that swallows everything even manages to make the old fans proud, in my opinion, challenging them not to admit the alienating validity of this work.
Justin Raisen has worked, among others, with John Cale. The latter was reviewed by the good MauroCincotta66 on these pages in a beautiful piece on the album POPtical Illusion, and I remember that the reviewer was pleased with the contemporary experimentation of Cale. Well, I am pleased today.
We don't realize often enough how much we harm ourselves by sabotaging. Maybe we try to progress, as Gordon does spontaneously in The Collective.
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