The Collective - Kim Gordon: Review

Review by Lav:

Kim Gordon is an absolute musical legend by any measure. From her decades spent in one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Sonic Youth, to her various side projects and production credits she's served as inspiration for countless musicians. That's why it's no surprise that even this far into her career she's continuing to innovate. The Collective sounds like a record brash enough to have been made by Kim in her experimental heydey of the early 80s, but with sonic displays that could only exist in 2024. The result is one of the most confrontational albums I've heard all year. 

The Collective kicks off with its lead single BYE BYE which is almost impossibly good. I love the combination of thumping trap beats with grinding guitars across the entire second half. The way Kim methodically lists off everything she's saying "bye bye" to is so captivating and the entire song just rips. Similarly stunning highlights come on the back half of the record. 

There are a lot of trap drums in this record but you wouldn't mistake any of it for actual trap music, with the exception being Shelf Warmer. The song literally has a rattling trap beat and gentle spoken word vocals yet somehow it's a pretty intense listen at most points given it's extremely eerie demeanor. Right after that we get The Believers which features a flood of blistering metallic noise and distortion right out of the gate. The song has a driving sense of urgency that builds up a ton of tension and erupts like a Nine Inch Nails song with clanging metallic noise across the last minute, it's spectacular. 

Those may be my absolute favorite songs on the record but they're hardly the only highlights. I'm quite fond of the other two singles from the album as well. I'm A Man is a fascinating song where Kim rhetorically steps into the mind of a man in the middle of a total identity crisis. It takes a deeply neurotic approach to telling the story with the chorus continuing to sound like personal affirmations every time she sings it. Psychedelic Orgasm stands out from the pummeling sonic demeanor that most of the album opts for. Instead, it has some dreamier space that sets up well for when the song achieves peaks of intensity of its own. 

The Candy House has another great beat with crashing glass sounds that feel like literal explosions in the mix. The vocal effects sound like something Arca would do, which is about as big of a compliment as I can give. I Don't Miss My Mind also has quite a wild instrumental with this shrill grinding throughout the entire song that sounds like some contact mic noise music. Despite the harshness, Kim sounds completely unflinching. Even at the catchiest refrains on the song she is just absolutely cutthroat in her performance. This song also has some of my favorite lyrical imagery on the album, especially in the opening verse. It's Dark Inside is probably the most sonically disjoined song here. It features darkwave-sounding drums that are blown the fuck out with distortion and they pair with the rumbling noise and Kim's commanding vocals. The singing gets pretty intimate at certain points with her whispering feeling so threatening. 

I'm not head over heels for EVERY song on the record. Tree House is solid but the spot it occupies in the tracklist doesn't do it any favors. Trophies kind of tries to pull some similar tricks to other songs on the record but doesn't quite pull it off with as much punch. And I think the record ends on a bit of an awkward moment with Dream Dollar. But for the most part the material here is excellent. 

Kim Gordon's status as a musical innovator was never going to come into question in the first place. But in case someone, somewhere was still not convinced, this record should more than do it. Decades deep into her career she continues to push boundaries and make some of the most confrontational and uncompromising music of 2024. Across this album she lives up to her reputation by shattering any expectations you could derive from it in the first place. All hail Kim Gordon. 8/10

For more great experimental music check out my review of Chelsea Wolfe's She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She