Kim Gordon didn’t invent SoundCloud rap, however she feels like she simply kind of stumbled onto a complete new sound. The Collective, the previous Sonic Youth bassist’s second solo document, carries the fearlessly revolutionary spirit that has marked her almost 50-year profession, and although she knew early on she needed it to be beat-driven, how a lot of it will sound like this specific pressure of hip-hop if her collaborator wasn’t Justin Raisen, who’s labored with everybody from Sky Ferreira to Lil Yachty, Yves Tumor to Teezo Landing? ‘BYE BYE’, the proper lead single and opening monitor, finds her rattling off a procuring listing over a lure beat Raisen thought was “slightly too wild” for Playboi Carti. That includes extra manufacturing from Anthony Paul Lopez, The Collective is their second full-length collaboration following 2019’s No House Document, which was darkish and fractured in its personal means, however not fairly as thrilling, cacophonous, or, sure, wild as its follow-up. Gordon doesn’t sound like she’s absorbed a bunch of up to date influences, and even dutifully acclimated herself in them, simply daring to reel off them, hanging on to noise as the plain thread to her legacy. Line to line, her spoken phrase sounds gleeful, enigmatic, disoriented, reckless, and completely unfazed.
It’s this dissonance – generational in addition to aesthetic – that renders these tracks extra fascinating than, say, the Drake monitor that Raisen contributed to. Most of the time, Gordon is aware of precisely the best way to take care of it. She lets the sounds and throb and squeal and bleed off the perimeters, pushing the purple, as her supply splits the distinction between rageful and listless. If No House Document offered a melting pot of musical concepts, The Collective takes extra pleasure in distorting them; it by no means feels greater than a breath away from whole collapse, however there’s sufficient variation to keep away from listener fatigue. Mature as Gordon’s instinct is perhaps, a few of the decisions really feel radically counterintuitive, just like the AutoTune that punctuates her spectral singing on ‘Psychedelic Orgasm’, steering it towards hyperpop territory. Different tracks merely revel within the juxtaposition of blown-out beats and extra acquainted, to Gordon, waves of commercial noise, maybe most intensely exacting on spotlight ‘It’s Darkish Inside’, particularly because the fragmented rhythm traces up with the orbit of Gordon’s lyrics: breath, grind. There’s a logic to the sequencing. too, making up for a few of the chaos whereas additionally accentuating it: ‘Shelf Hotter’ leaves extra space for Gordon’s vocals, however they develop hole and estranged, whereas ‘The Believers’ is frantic and muscular, a end result of the document’s concepts that additionally renders them indecipherable.
There’s no lyric sheet for the album, which solely makes issues worse. What’s so tough and uncompromising about The Collective isn’t its brazen sonics however its cool air of disaffection: human interplay lowered to meaningless interplay, overwhelming emotion subtle by its fixed ubiquity, confusion melting into apathy. It’s an album consumed by the brutality of the banal, feeding on the dopamine of scrolling on TikTok relatively than the normal enchantment of diarism; she even mentions the platform on ‘Psychedelic Orgasm’. However there are mantras and phrases to latch onto, and particularly on the singles, Gordon’s messaging is potent, not least as a result of she revisits themes which have at all times pervaded her artwork. “So what if I like the large truck?” she intones on ‘I’m a Man’, posturing masculinity greater than explicitly satirizing it. “Giddy up, giddy up/ Don’t name me poisonous/ Simply trigger I like your butt!” The tone is evident, however even when it’s not, the lyrics are quotable and pithy, piquing your curiosity as a substitute of drifting off.
It really works as a result of Gordon finds rapture within the abyss, or no less than sounds interested by it. The ultimate chorus of the album is “Cement the model,” which is ironic partly as a result of Gordon’s fashion is so amorphous; you’ll be able to name her an arbiter of cool, however that coolness is so laborious to nail down, replicate, or corporatize. She reveals little interest in the homogeneity of a sound or style, simply pulling the bits and items that enable her to convey the “absolute craziness” she sees round her; and for all its inscrutability, that craziness is instantly communicated. Gordon’s experimentation may have felt vapid and demeaning within the context of appropriation, however that’s one other which means behind The Collective: it’s too far faraway from the self to name what she’s doing self-indulgent. It’s alluring and relatable, mundane and apocalyptic, infuriating even. However for no matter motive, you’ll be able to’t assist however preserve your ears glued to it, if solely to be a part of a larger complete.