Since her former band ceased operations in 2011, Kim Gordon’s musical activity has largely flown under the radar. But with Body/Head, her experimental partnership with guitarist Bill Nace, she strides boldly into the post-Sonic Youth era.
In comparison to the recent high-profile recordings by her Sonic Youth cohorts, Coming Apart is easily the most challenging, and it’s also a cinch to divide the group’s fans into two camps. Folks who suffered the band’s excursions into abrasion and abstraction in want of their mastery of melodiousness and rock will probably find this sprawling effort to be a confounding and/or repellant mess. Conversely, those with a kinder disposition toward SY’s “out” side, and Gordon’s wildcard contribution in particular, will just as likely welcome it with open ears. But in doing so, they will still likely be struck by the severity of its design.
Sonic Youth’s work stoppage certainly had an impact on all of its members, but three-fourths of the group jumped into the musical fray with a fair amount of quickness. For instance, Steve Shelley began drumming in numerous settings, most notably as a member of the Chicago band Disappears and as a guest on SY guitarist Lee Ranaldo’s enjoyable if somewhat reserved 2012 LP Between the Times and Tides.
Unsurprisingly, the band’s most prominent (and prolific) guitar wielder has kept busy with a variety of underground collaborations. But the debut LP from Chelsea Light Moving, Thurston Moore’s biggest project thus far in terms of media attention and sales figures, is also the one post-hiatus (though perhaps the more appropriate term now is post-dissolution) record by a SY figure to really embody the outfit’s later, “mature” rock sensibility.
This is surely not to suggest that Kim Gordon was busy doing nothing over the last couple of years. Early in 2012 Body/Head released a brutally limited edition 7-inch on the Belgian label Ultra Eczema, and in January of this year a 4-song 12-inch appeared on the imprint Open Mouth. To the majority of Sonic Youth’s fan base however, these emissions ended up getting as much notice as one of Thurston’s countless avant side efforts.
And for a large number of SY’s followers, Gordon’s presumed lack of musical action was doubtlessly just dandy. While her role as bassist and intermittent vocalist (and in later years, occasional third guitarist) was crucial to the group’s overall heft, it’s also feels true that Gordon’s input continues to be undervalued in comparison to what the other members brought to the table, especially the efforts of Ranaldo and Moore.
Guitar godliness definitely plays a part in this situation, since for many Lee and Thurston are the Hendrix and Clapton of the ‘80s underground rock brigade. Yes, they did leave a lot of folks befuddled or perturbed as they initially stepped out onto the fringe, but as was the case with Hendrix’s thing back when it was a brand new sound, a modicum of cats quickly caught on to what the SY guitar flank brought to the rock discourse.
And as history shows, many more eventually came to terms. By Daydream Nation, Ranaldo and Moore served as guitar heroes for a younger generation. Sure, only a fraction of those worshipers jumped head first into, for just one example, Barefoot in the Head, Moore’s 1990 collab with Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, the sax men of blast-furnace free-skronk unit Borbetomagus (the pair eventually appearing on SY’s 2002 LP Murray Street), but most of the unit’s more rock-situated acolytes at least understood how these essays in avant extremity were necessary to Sonic Youth’s continued development as a band.
Gordon’s personality was no less essential, though as Sonic Youth’s lifespan played out it seems pretty accurate to describe her outsider ruminations as being far less accepted and much more tolerated by scores of observers. Much of it comes down to her simple avoidance of the rock taggable. Unlike the other members, she came to the band from an art-world background rather than an overtly rock one. But complicating her rocker credentials was her membership in Free Kitten, an indie supergroup that issued three albums of loose-hanging rock esoterica back in the ‘90s.
The pleasure derived from Free Kitten can vary wildly on a track by track basis, and this was part of their potential charm. I happen to like the quickly conceived spillage to obviously varying degrees, but many who heard them at the time were bluntly underwhelmed, and the subsequent reaction to her 2000 joint venture with DJ Olive and Ikue Mori (volume five in the band’s SYR series) was largely similar. Some even regarded it with open disdain.
There’d always been complaints over the sound of her voice or the shape of the tunes she sung in SY proper, but as time wore on a palpable dislike of Gordon’s often intensely non-rockist offerings outside the band could be ascertained. And frankly, this is very interesting from a historical perspective. If a major part of Sonic Youth lore relates to how they were spawned from the divisive seizures of No Wave movement, it seems that Gordon is the member who’s best carried the spirit of that once highly detested and flagrantly arty milieu into the 21st century.
Those inhabiting this bullpen of Kim Gordon aversion could very easily have a field day jeering at the demanding soundscapes of Body/Head’s maximal full-length debut for Matador Records Coming Apart, but if they actually take the time to give a committed listen to this 2LP’s entirety, the intensity and conceptual diligence of the ten tracks just might return the investment and give them temporary pause.
Abstract, yes; in a seemingly fitting omen for what’s to come, the adjective serves as the title of the record’s first cut. But after only a brief engagement, this becomes a lazy association. If well-established as one of rock’s non-normative vocalists, Gordon has been a consistently effective conveyor of emotion, and her words here, if terse and employed with repetition, stand as far from elliptical in nature.
Likewise the guitar playing, if obviously directed toward the creation of aural climates that are substantially divorced from the modes of rock traditionalism, is by no means divested of quickly graspable patterns. In fact, approximately half of “Abstract”’s running time features a guitar line that wouldn’t be a bit out-of-place on one of SY’s later albums.
The latter portion of the track does find one guitar spinning into a convulsive tangle as the other bursts into an eruption of distortion, with the combination quite massive in effect, but what’s most impressive across the piece’s six minutes is the duo’s employment of mood. And as the record continues, this atmosphere gets a deep and, no beating around the bush about it, exhausting examination. Coming Apart can be aptly assessed as a soul purge, and in this instance this means Body/Head’s offerings aren’t necessarily pleasurable as much as they can be downright riveting and yes, draining.
But it’s also not an emotional train wreck. As Coming Apart unfolds, it becomes clearer than ever that Gordon’s abstraction is extremely methodical, and with Nace she’s found an uncommonly sympathetic collaborator for the achievement of her goals. And despite what many will claim, I feel it’s inaccurate to peg the record as an act of mere provocation.
While the emotions explored across this release can certainly inspire discomfort, they are also relatable to what’s going on out here in the real world. In short, this album is one of the most uncompromising inventories of femininity to have made my acquaintance in a good long time. While cuts like “Last Mistress” and “Actress” lend much to Coming Apart’s strengths as a woman’s record (the former relating specifically to aspects of Gordon and Moore’s divorce), the sharpest examples come late in its progression, with their power increased through back-to-back sequencing.
The first is “Ain’t,” a captivating borrowing of Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life,” and the second, which as the double album’s penultimate entry is also the first of two lengthy selections that greatly expand its cumulative weight as a “difficult” object, is “Black,” a reading of the traditional “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” in a version directly inspired by ‘60s avant-garde vocal phantom Patty Waters.
Water’s recording of the tune, found on her ’65 album Sings for the mighty ESP Disk label, remains one of the most mind-flaying jumps into the abyss ever committed to vinyl. And while the source of Body/Head’s inspiration is clear, “Black” is stunning entirely on its own, revealing a successful extension of the tune in service of Coming Apart’s larger ambitions, aims which pertain to form as much as content.
Naturally, those comfortable with the currents of modern noise aesthetics will find the easiest inroads to what’s offered in the first six minutes of “Black,” the guitars examining rugged textures of notes and distortion at length before Gordon’s voice finally enters the fray. But as with much noise racket, the harshness attains an unsettling beauty. And those looking for some flat-out wailing should find Nace’s aggressive string-burn on “Can’t Help You,” and additionally the extended environments of the seventeen minute closer “Frontal,” especially attractive.
Regarding Coming Apart’s guitar component, it’s worth noting that Body/Head began as an instrumental duo, chalking up collabs with Ikue Mori and the Dead C.’s Michael Morley along the way, before arriving at this specific spot. Interestingly, “Untitled,” a brief and curiously minimal piece included here that lacks Gordon’s voice, underlines the pair’s dedication to their original objective as it’s spun into the weave of this unplanned landscape.
This release can surely be sonically formidable, but like all great art based upon the methods of improvisation, its success is derived from discipline. And like all legitimately avant-garde experimentation, its true audience will be small and its detractors plentiful. Coming Apart is also a work of striking seriousness that will endure the opprobrium of the naysayers, and that it vindicates Kim Gordon as one of modern music’s most unique innovators is simply icing on an already rich cake.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
