Album Review: Kim Gordon, No Home Record

The indie-rock power couple rankings were thrown into disarray in 2011, when Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore announced their separation - and with it the end of Sonic Youth.

Gordon was always the coolest component of the coolest band in alternative pop. She retains that drop-dead mystique on her first solo album, a bruising-yet-tuneful affair that feels very much part of the Sonic Youth expanded universe, and which is named after a movie by late Belgian feminist director Chantal Akerman (what were the odds on it not being named after a movie by a Belgian feminist director?). She begins as she means to continue with single 'Air BnB', a gently feral attack on Silicon Valley turbo-avarice and the societal schisms it has wrought. Guitars growl and the odd wonky beat prowls as Gordon and producer Justin Raisen (Angel Olsen, Charli Xcx, Sky Ferreira) conjure playfully with the ghost of Sonic Youth records past.

Gordon's vocals are as breathy as on SY classics. But there are innovations too. Gordon has described Cardi B's "punk rock" hit 'Bodak Yellow' as an influence. The hip-hop flavourings are especially to the fore on 'Cookie Butter', where Gordon delivers her lines in discordant, half-sung bars. Sonic Youth have dipped a toe in rap previously, of course, collaborating with Cypress Hill on the Judgement Night soundtrack in - pauses to feel very very old - 1993. Yet No Home Record is different: Gordon is forging her own course, honouring her past while refusing to be defined by it. Sonic Youth fans will be thrilled. But this isn't a record for them specifically. It's for the whole world, too.

8/10