I don’t mean to be judgmental, but if you don’t know who Kim Gordon is, you should get your head in the game. I have seen her solo show before a couple years back at Mississippi Studios here in Portland, Oregon when she was promoting her album “The Collective.” It was what you would expect from the pioneer of 80s No Wave, crunchy experimental synth and chaotic guitar feedback. Her new album “Play Me” however, leans more heavily into hip hop elements mixed with her signature stilted dreamy vocal style and Dada-esque lyrics. But I digress, first I simply must mention her opener, Sasami.
As soon as she walked on stage with only her drummer and her Gibson Explorer, I knew it was going to be good. A solo artist for the past eight years, her stage antics are reminiscent of Karen O, doing back bends while playing guitar, molesting the microphone while writhing in place, and egging on comically inauthentic “boos” from the audience.
Defying initial expectations, her songwriting would go from heavily guitar driven headbangers like “Skin a Rat”(albeit her final song of the night which she described as “a song about murder”) to vocally delicate songs about heartbreak like “Slugger” with the lyrics “Crying like Dolly from 9 to 5.”
In one instance she would churn the blood inside you with a heavy stroke of guitar strings and a frenzied wide-eyed look, the next moment she would make you swoon with her soft almost country affectation in songs like “Just Be Friends.”
In the song “Need It To Work,” Sasami invokes quiet desperation and the pressure to people please, in a soft yet robotic vocal delivery with hints of sexual undertones, all of which is between erratic leads and sludgy guitar chords.
Wearing a black sequined mini dress, 72-year-old rock icon Gordon, accompanied by her all girl band, saunters on stage starting the night off with what could pass for 70s TV show theme music under beat poetry.
With its upbeat horn chorus, “Play Me” is a light and playful intro as Gordon sings stoically, swaying center stage. Conversely in the beats of “Black Out” and the heavy droning bass of “Subcon,” Gordon confronts American political figures through the thinnest of veils with the lyrics “you don’t Trump me, I Trump you,” “he swings it like a Chainsaw,” and “you wanna go to Mars, then what?”
Now lets be honest, for decades Gordon’s sultry breathy vocal style has given us all the tingles, particularly when singing lyrics dripping with innuendoes. Thankfully, in songs like the bouncy “Dirty Tech” and “Busy Bee,” we can find such lyrics as “busy bee taking money, on your knees like its honey.”
Overall sonically lighter than her previous album, Gordon’s performance introduces her fans to a much more hip-hop beat driven collection of short works (the longest song on the new album being just over 3.5 minutes) and showcases her continuing dedication and expansion as an artist.