It has been some time since Sonic Youth reached an ignominious end, ironically torn apart by the personal tensions of rock and roll cliché that the band had so studiously avoided over the course of their tumultuous career. Although Kim Gordon has been far from idle (releasing a number of albums with her body/head, not to mention writing the acclaimed Girl in a band autobiography), No Home Record is her first official solo album. The patience that Kim displayed in reaching this point has paid off, resulting in an organic, heady work that recalls some her most sparkling moments as the soul of Sonic Youth, her oh-so-familiar voice allowed to roam free over an ever-shifting musical backdrop that shows her continuing evolution as an artist.
In keeping with her career to date, nothing on No Home Record is as it seems. The same playful spirit that saw Kim subverting sexual preconceptions in Sonic Youth, providing vocals for covers of tracks such as Moist Vagina and I wanna Be Your Dog, is rife on No Home Record. Opening track Sketch Artist is a perfect case in point. It opens with sampled strings, suggesting a mournful approach before skittering beats tear across the mix and suddenly Kim is there, her voice whispering in your ear as the increasingly industrial backdrop swirls around her like sonic armour. That jittery percussion carries over into Air BnB, but it’s paired with jazzy flourishes of guitar that recall one-time Sonic Youth collaborator Martin Bisi, and an explosive chorus that is as heavy as anything Kim has ever put her name to. It evokes the spirit, if not exactly the sound, of dirty and Goo, and Kim remains unassailably cool at the centre of the storm she has so casually whipped up. Having sated her punk rock urges, Kim proves surprisingly adept at drawing on the asynchronous beats of Aphex Twin with Paprika Pony, a hypnotic, addictive track that underscores the inquisitive nature of Kim’s artistic impulses. Having successfully lured the audience into a false sense of security, Kim heads off in an industrial direction once more, the resultant Murdered Out built around a gruelling bass line that rides roughshod over Stella Mozgawa’s metronomic beat. Heavy and with a potent sense of groove, the track adds a touch of Death Valley 69 horror as Kim adds layers of noise and feedback, burying her vocals under a crackling distortion that adds a threatening edge.
With the first half of the album having proved remarkably coherent, don’t play it provides the come down as Kim chants “don’t play it back” over a subterranean beat that shifts in and out of focus. Caught between dub and ambient, don’t play it feels like the logical extension of the experimentalism found on the white-y album filtered through the lens of Massive Attack’s ground breaking Mezzanine and Radiohead’s Kid A, almost as if Kim is reclaiming the territory that she so effectively conquered in the late 80s before anyone else even realised there was anything out there. Perhaps the album’s most stripped-down piece, cookie butter sees Kim laying down vocals over a sparse drum ‘n’ bass backdrop curated by Shawn Everett. A simple recitation of the human impulses that lie at the core of us all, Kim imbues each couplet with deep meaning as she seesaws between first and second-person pronouns, by turns accusatory and confessional, the explosive conclusion threatens to shred your speaker cones if played at too inflammatory a volume. Arguably the album’s most unexpected number, the bizarre alt-country-punk-noise of Hungry Baby sounds like Kim jamming on Butthole Surfers and Meat Puppets and it’s every bit as awesome as that sounds. With a rumbling country beat and sheet-metal feedback, Kim and her band still manage to make it surprisingly accessible and before you know it you’re into the shimmering beauty of Earthquake, a piece of music that sits somewhere between Kim’s own contre le sexism and live recordings of The Velvet Underground. Awash with alien feedback and rumbling bass, it’s Kim’s soothing voice that keeps the piece grounded and you realise that you’d follow that voice anywhere no matter how threatening the backdrop. The album ends a track that feels like an exhortation from Kim to herself, entitled Get Yr Life Back. Lost, once more, in an art-rock haze, it starts as a call back to early Sonic Youth before a dark industrial beat brings us back to the present day once more and the album spins lazily to a halt.
Like David Bowie, Kim Gordon is an artist possessed of a rare talent that enables her to synthesise a wide array of influences, re-arranging them to suit her unique style. On the one hand, No Home Record is hugely diverse, roaming from early Sonic Youth to industrial vial dub, drum ‘n’ bass and trip hop; on the other hand, Kim has managed to craft a remarkably coherent piece of work that flows beautifully from one piece to the next. It’s an incredibly dense album, with layer after layer requiring a certain degree of patience, and you never hear it the same way twice. It’s also beautifully recorded, Justin Raisen capturing the disparate elements and giving the whole a warm, analogue tone. Easily one of the most original and exciting albums to have been released in 2019, No Record Home is a piece of art presented as a contemporary rock record and it marks a high point in Kim’s incredibly storied career. 9.5
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