Every song title has to be in capital letters these days, but we’ll allow it in this case, given Kim Gordon’s heroics on the frontline of the 1980s/1990s alternative music wars; the Kool Thing in the still unbeatable Sonic Youth (yes, her band with ex-husband Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley really can only be matched by The Velvet Underground in the upside down world version of the musical canon) and also feminist art-rock godmother to the riot grrrl movement.
After her 2024 Grammy-nominated album The Collective and the viral hit BYE BYE, Gordon’s reasserted herself as alt music’s Boudicca, beloved once again by the hippest crowd on the music, fashion, film and art scenes. Her third solo album, PLAY ME arrives with high expectations this time around, which it casually blows apart with an ultra-cool, insouciantly avant-garde melding of punk, lo-fi dance and mangled hip-hop.
