No Home Record
You’d think that an artist making her first solo album after nearly 40 years of collaborative work would fall for at least a few pitfalls of sentimentality—the glance in the rearview, the meditation on middle age, the warmth of accomplishment, whatever. Then again, Kim Gordon was never much for soft landings. Noisy, vibrant, and alive with the kind of fragmented poetry that made her presence in Sonic Youth so special, *No Home Record* feels, above all, like a debut—a new voice clocking in for the first time, testing waters, stretching her capacity. The wit is classic (“Airbnb/Could set me free!” she wails on “Air BnB,” channeling the misplaced passions of understimulated yuppies worldwide), as is the vacant sex appeal (“Touch your nipple/You’re so fine!” she wails on “Hungry Baby,” channeling the…misplaced passions of understimulated yuppies worldwide). Most surprising is how informed the album is by electronic music (“Don’t Play It”) and hip-hop (“Paprika Pony,” “Sketch Artist”)—a shift that breaks with the free-rock-saviordom that Sonic Youth always represented while maintaining the continuity of experimentation that made Gordon a pioneer in the first place.
With a career spanning nearly four decades, Kim Gordon is one of the most prolific and visionary artists working today. A co-founder of the legendary Sonic Youth, Gordon has performed all over the world, collaborating with many of music’s most exciting figures including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Julie Cafritz and Stephen Malkmus. Most recently, Gordon has been hitting the road with Body/Head, her spellbinding partnership with artist and musician Bill Nace. Despite the exhaustive nature of her résumé, the most reliable aspect of Gordon’s music may be its resistance to formula. Songs discover themselves as they unspool, each one performing a test of the medium’s possibilities and limits. Her command is astonishing, but Gordon’s artistic curiosity remains the guiding force behind her music. It makes sense that this “American idea” (as Gordon says on the agitated rock track “Air BnB”) of purchasing utopia permeates the record, as no place is this phenomenon more apparent than Los Angeles, where Gordon was born and recently returned to after several lifetimes on the east coast. It was a move precipitated by a number of seismic shifts in her personal life and undoubtedly plays a role in No Home Record’s fascination with transience. The album opens with the restless “Sketch Artist,” where Gordon sings about “dreaming in a tent” as the music shutters and skips like scenery through a car window. “Even Earthquake,” perhaps the record’s most straightforward track embodies this mood; Gordon’s voice wavering like watercolor: “If I could cry and shake for you / I’d lay awake for you / I got sand in my heart for you,” guitar strokes blending into one another as they bleed out across an unstable page. Front to back, No Home Record is an expert operation in the uncanny. You don’t simply listen to Gordon’s music; you experience it.
After 38 years of making music, Kim Gordon’s thrilling solo debut lives at the vanguard of sound and performance, shot through with the beautiful, unsparing noise that has always defined her art.
Prompted by the Sonic Youth legend's fear of cultural homogeny, this is accessible record surprises despite its author’s enormous legacy
As part of cult band Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon pioneered a sound: rasping, post-punk music that presaged much of the indie rock that reverberates off the airwaves today. Her first solo album owes much to the band, too: discordant and at times surreal and nihilistic, it’s an exhilarating mixture.
Kim Gordon's solo debut, 'No Home Record,' is her most accessible, immediate work since the breakup of Sonic Youth.
Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon releases a debut solo album packed with wry humour, while Elbow jolt listeners out of complacency with their eighth studio record
With every year that passes after Sonic Youth's breakup, Kim Gordon's art becomes more liberated and more revealing.
Kim Gordon, iconic harbinger of sonic savagery, renowned visual artist, acclaimed author, and sometimes-actor, has returned to the fray with a debut solo that defies expectation while welcoming in seasoned listeners with a taste of the familiar.
Kim Gordon has been busy. Sure, this record might be her official debut solo album, but just look at what she’s achieved since Sonic Youth split
Like every resistance to the formula from Kim Gordon before, this isn’t how you thought she’d sound on her first solo album in her 40-year career.
'No Home Record' by Kim Gordon, album review by Adam Fink. The original member of Sonic Youth, releases her new album on October 11, via Matador Records