Kim Gordon, veteran musician and artist who co-founded Sonic Youth, discusses her return to beat-driven solo work and new album PLAY ME. She explores rhythm over melody, critiques streaming and playlist culture, and reflects on masculinity, stage power and Riot Grrrl. Conversations touch on club life, electronic influences, art practice and political stakes.
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insights INSIGHT
Masculinity Lost Then Marketed
Gordon traces masculine identity shifts to feminism and women entering the workforce, leaving men unsure of roles.
She says consumer culture marketed to men replaced older masculine expectations, producing confusion and reactionary movements.
insights INSIGHT
Stage Presence Changes Dynamics
Gordon notes a woman's presence onstage changes a band's energy and opens a different entry point for audiences.
She links performing for a full room with increased confidence and power.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Watching Riot Grrrl Emerge
Gordon found Riot Grrrl exciting as an organic scene where women wanted to play gigs without male gatekeeping.
She praised Kathleen Hanna's vitality and the movement's evolution from earlier DIY punk influences.
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The Sonic Youth cofounder opens up about her solo output, the intersection of art and music, and her new album, PLAY ME.
For over four decades, Kim Gordon has navigated the edges where fine art meets noise. Her claim to fame was as a founding member of Sonic Youth, the band that took the nihilistic, abrasive energy of New York's no wave scene and forged it into a new language for rock.
After Sonic Youth's public breakup in 2011, Gordon returned to her original creative practice: visual art. But in recent years, she has undergone a staggering creative transformation that's led her back to music. At 72—an age when most legends are content with the heritage circuit—she has instead dived headlong into the sounds of the present: industrial electronics, Chicago footwork and the blown-out low-end of SoundCloud rap.
Aiming to break with her Sonic Youth legacy, Gordon released her first two solo albums, No Home Record and The Collective, in 2019 and 2024, respectively. And now, she's back with her third LP: PLAY ME. Working alongside producer Justin Raisen, she uses beat-oriented frameworks to interrogate what she calls the "tyranny of frictionless culture." From naming Spotify playlists in her lyrics to donating proceeds to reproductive rights, her work remains a vital, confrontational critique of late capitalism and technocratic fascism.
In this RA Exchange, Gordon discusses the process of moving closer to solo work, as well as the masculinity of rock; her evolving relationship with electronic music; the politics of the "body;" and why, after thinking she was done with music, she keeps getting pulled back in. Listen to the episode in full.
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