Consumer Guide Album

Kim Gordon: The Collective [Matador, 2024]
Textural rather than hooky, midway between hard rock and cacophony hence closer sonically and conceptually to classic post-grunge Sonic Youth than not just 1990's major-label debut Goo or 2006's idiosyncratically tuneful Rather Ripped much less 1998's polemically if all too fleetingly connubial A Thousand Leaves. Those put off or feeling contrary have every right to slot this one as a noise album, but if so it's a striking and courageous one. When Gordon is so inclined she can be songful enough, and here "enough" stretches that parameter a little. But her natural avant-garde affinities not only dominate the musical gestalt her solo work tends toward, with melodies not to mention tunes given short shrift. And here, unlike so many avant-gardists, she achieves what is recognizably her own sound. A-