The renaissance of Kim Gordon

Few would have imagined when the revered New York noise band Sonic Youth split up in 2011 that their bass player, Kim Gordon, would find herself, many years on, declaiming cut-up lyrics over digital judders and the iciest of trap beats. But Gordon’s creative resurgence has been a sidelong revelation. If the past is another country – they really did things differently there – the present is offering ample opportunities to boggle at how someone who helped pave the way for grunge seems perfectly at home over the nihilistic, ticklish rhythms de nos jours. Gordon’s music has always been dissonant and discomfiting; now it slaps.

Her radically updated sound has coincided with a wider resurgence of interest in Gordon and her musical background. Her 2015 memoir, Girl in a Band, captured end-of-the-20th-century New York in all its scuzzy glory, and laid bare her breakup with bandmate Thurston Moore. The book’s publication dovetailed with the start of a wave of youthful nostalgia for the 90s – that fertile, messy period in which she was a pivotal figure. More recently, Gordon’s 2024 track Bye Bye went viral on TikTok. (To a Playboi Carti-type beat, she frets about packing for a trip: it’s jarring and bleak, but also funny and relatable.)

Tonight’s mesmerising show exhibits Gordon’s new formula: rage rap percussion, sheets of guitar noise and her stern, sultry pronouncements. That recipe first appeared on 2019’s industrial-leaning No Home Record, the solo debut she made with producer Justin Raisen, best-known for his work with Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira. Later refined on 2024’s The Collective, which was nominated for two Grammy awards, it has been distilled to a short, sharp essence on Play Me, her most recent outing with Raisen, released last month. Lyrically, the record is a takedown on how we live now, and how much we have lost to algorithms and tech bros.

As Gordon’s live band summon additional samples and disembodied electronics from consoles and drum pads, she notes it’s been 26 years since she last played this west London venue. (Although Sonic Youth did play here in 2000 and 2002, but yes, it’s been a while.) She doesn’t say much more than “thank you” for the rest of the night, but the set is pure, unadulterated solo Gordon.

The first half of the evening finds her airing the exhilarating Play Me end to end. The second revisits The Collective and earlier solo work, a magnificently strange period where Jpegmafia intersects with late-period Scott Walker. The Play Me numbers go hard and don’t overstay their welcome, true to their contemporary rap sources.

Play Me itself hovers in on a looping echo of woozy hip-hop jazz, Gordon’s lyrics comprised of a selection of absurd Spotify playlist titles. “Rich popular girl/ Villain mode,” Gordon sighs malevolently, making plain her disdain for the commodification of music as background ambience. The harsher No Hands is a clipped, minimal racket with what might pass for a singalong chorus. Glee and exhilaration alternate with sheet metal acoustics.

Throughout, Gordon’s live band are revelatory, with Madi Vogt’s taut, crisp drumming playing in tandem with the console beats, and guitarist and sound manipulator Sarah Register adding crunch and screech. On Cookie Butter, a tense track from 2019’s No Home Record, Register runs a screwdriver up and down her guitar strings as the track culminates in a cacophonous breakdown. Playing bass for one of the most famous bassists in rock could be daunting, but at the back, Emily Retsas reverberates, unfazed, throughout.

Vogt also has the unenviable task of reproducing Foo Fighter and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl’s muscular contribution to Busy Bee – a track on which Gordon plays harrowing guitar. It’s superlatively loud and heavy. Gordon and Grohl also go way back, of course: Sonic Youth invited Nirvana to Europe as their support act in 1991.

Tonight, Gordon relies on a lectern for her newest lyrics. It has the effect of reducing her movements, and gives the first few songs the air of a performance art piece or lecture on dystopian tech. Soon, though, the stiltedness of the presentation melts away – her music is so strong, her lightning rod stillness only adds to its impact.

It’s clear that Gordon is more familiar with her previous album, freeing her up to clasp the mic and stretch her legs a little more. I’m a Man, from The Collective, is relentless, its pugilistic grind paired with lyrics that obliquely reflect on masculinity in crisis. Psychedelic Orgasm lives up to its name, as shoegaze guitars and Auto-Tuned vocals make for a head-banging din. Gordon has to shout to be heard.

Only towards the end do we get anything that remotely recalls her old band, Sonic Youth – an unreleased track, Cigarette, starts with her playing open-ended, ambient guitar. Gradually, the band coagulate and it all ends in washes of feedback. But really, you don’t miss Sonic Youth much at all tonight. This iteration of Kim Gordon is just so fierce, assured and delightful.

Photograph by Antonio Olmos for The Observer