Perhaps no figure embodies the cooler edge of the postpunk epoch than musician, singer, songwriter, and producer Kim Gordon, a founding member of Sonic Youth, participant in numerous other musical projects, and vital solo artist. It's in the latter capacity that Gordon, who has been cited as an influence by creatives ranging from Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna to filmmaker Sofia Coppola, will perform at Basilica Hudson on June 12 with her band in support of her newly released second solo album, The Collective. Tickets are $45 in advance and $50 day of show.
"It's very hard to make [the music] sound just like the record, but that's not really the intention anyway," says Gordon via Zoom about playing the songs from The Collective, which she and producer Justin Raisen (John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) created electronically, with her band in a live setting. "Some things get filtered out, and we make up new parts. There's a lot of rehearsing. It can be a puzzle—a collage."
The visual-art analogy is apt for Gordon, who attended Otis College of Art and Design in her native Los Angeles and had intended to go into that medium before moving to New York in 1980. The following year, she played in the short-lived trio CKM before picking up a bass and forming Sonic Youth with guitarist and singer Lee Renaldo and her eventual husband, guitarist and singer Thurston Moore (the couple separated in 2011). With a succession of drummers that culminated with Steve Shelley, the group's longest-serving percussionist, Sonic Youth became the era's defining noise rock band. Shattering and redrawing the parameters of guitar-based rock 'n' roll with their fearlessly experimental approach, the quartet (later a quintet) helped immensely to introduce avant-garde styles from the punk underground into the broader culture, both directly and by way of the acts that they inspired, such as Nirvana, the Flaming Lips, Pavement, and Hole. The group's 15th and final studio album, The Eternal, appeared in 2009.
With a distinct vocal style that glides between hushed, sexy menace and cathartic wailing, Gordon was a formidable force within and alongside Sonic Youth throughout their 30-year run, and has continued to be one since that band's dissolution. She oversees X-Girl, the clothing line she co-launched in 1994; has acted in films (2005's Last Days, 2007's I'm Not There) and TV shows ("Portlandia," "Animals"); and has reconnected strongly with her visual-art roots through solo exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and, currently, L.A.'s O-Town House. Her 2015 memoir, Girl in a Band, was a bestseller, while Keller, about her late brother, Keller Reed Gordon, was published last month.
On the musical front, Gordon has been most active recently in the guitar-duo format, performing and recording with Bill Nace in Body/Head and with Alex Knost in Glitterbust. Her solo debut, 2019's No Home Record, was highly praised for its claustrophobic mix of dub-beat punk electronica and guitar noise. The Collective, which was partially inspired by Jennifer Egan's 2022 novel The Candy House and revolves around trap and trip-hop beats, is markedly different than its predecessor. Why the change?
"I don't want to just repeat things," says Gordon. "But I hope people who hear what I do find something they can identify with. Music creates its own environment."
