Kim Gordon - Play Me

A new album should always feel exciting, like something you have never heard before, right? Well, Gordon's third solo release is confusing, unrelenting and completely bonkers at times. You have to double take in quite a few of these tracks. For that reason it will not be for everyone. Racking in at just under thirty minutes, any muso should give it their undivided attention. Gordon clearly has bees in her bonnet, unpacking the pitfalls of AI and its intrusion on art in purposefully and hypnotically robotic delivery. A wonder, really, that so few bigger artists have jumped on this thematic bandwagon, but Play Me will inevitably be a trend-setter. All the songs are titled in capital letters, a playful dig on the synthetic, pumped out state of so much that modern pop produces nowadays. 

Lead single “Dirty Tech” has this killer durgy trap riff running through it, performing as an exciting mission statement. I keep singing it around my student house - “Boss, hey boss!” - and my housemates must be so confused, because this is a genuinely weird and unexpected release from Gordon. Many performers spring to mind as musician’s musicians - people you will inevitably love, if you love music full stop - your Jacob Alons, Big Thiefs (autocorrect flagging up, irritatingly!) and Cameron Winters. Arguably, too, with how addictive and compulsive they were, laying the foundations of modern punk, Sonic Youth were impossible not to love. 

Now, Gordon has migrated into being an artist’s artist, where the art has something to say, and everyone will have a view of it. Play Me is artfully sterile, cheeky, and somehow both effortlessly cool and playfully awkward at the same time. Want a definitive example of a what the hell track, give “Square Jaw” a listen. The album is a statement of modern music and its relationship with tech, how it influences us, how we influence it. And a museum piece, something to hang up and frame, like in the Tate Modern, as the world burns, and critics pass and say “I get what she was trying to do there, but I'm not sure it worked for me”. Gordon is an artist in her prime, managing what similarly aged punk rockers like Suzi Quatro and Debbie Harry have arguably failed to do: sell records, and remain hip and relevant.