It's Dark Inside
Beat-driven albums from Kim Gordon and Tierra Whack offer internal monologues about mental health, cultural malaise, and the toxic effects of the Internet.
Kim Gordon - The Collective
The story behind The Collective, Kim Gordon’s second solo album, is almost too good to be true. It involves a throbbing, scabrous beat, originally crafted for the off-kilter rapper Playboi Carti. Carti passed on the beat, deeming it a little too outre even for his standards. But it wasn’t too weird at all for Gordon, the 70-year-old noise-rock icon who co-founded Sonic Youth. She was happy to use the discarded beat as a catalyst for her adventurous new release.
That beat shows up, in all its Soundcloud glory, as the opening song on The Collective. “BYE BYE” is all blown-out bass and unyielding trap, Gordon coloring all over it with skronking, dissonant guitar. Amidst the agitation and histrionics, she recites what sounds like a vacation to-do list, in her typically imperturbable deadpan: “Call the vet, call the groomer, call the dog sitter/ Milk thistle, calcium, high-rise, boot cut, Advil, black jeans.”
“BYE BYE” sets the tone for an album that is ruthlessly, addictively, and exhaustingly rhythm-forward. The Collective exists in conversation with contemporary hip-hop— one might say that it is contemporary hip-hop— and yet it’s hardly music for the club. Its speaker-rattling bass is harsh and unrelenting, animated by shards of guitar, stream-of-conscious lyrics, and Gordon’s unflappable cool. It’s noise-damaged pop art, existing somewhere on the same continuum as Nine Inch Nails and Yeezus.
Gordon has never made an album like this before, and yet The Collective feels like a natural development in her long arc of artful provocation. Both in Sonic Youth and in various side projects, Gordon has proven a keen navigator of the avant garde, and an astute observer of how consumer culture shapes human psyche and spirit. The Collective pushes her aesthetic interests past the breaking point, and Gordon sounds as sure-footed as ever.
But what to make of a song like “BYE BYE,” where the lyrics sound like they could be bullet points copied and pasted directly from the Notes app? Listening to Gordon’s droning litany, I couldn’t help but hear it as a follow-up to “Numb,” U2’s half-rapped ode to information overload, circa 1993. Or maybe it’s a liturgy of the mundane, like you might find in one of Nicholson Baker’s books.
Perhaps the most rewarding way into the song is to receive it as study in the brain-altering, reality-warping effects of the Internet. In recent years, there have been a number of albums exploring the way digital existence compromises the integrity of body, mind, and soul— how mediating our physical existence through disembodied ecosystems is inherently unnatural. By replicating the way TikTok and Instagram force our thinking into tasks, lists, and algorithms, The Collective enters into conversation with 100 gecs’ wonderful 10,000 gecs album, among others.
Yet where 100 gecs lean into silliness, Gordon’s humor is considerably more acidic. In “I’m a Man,” she adopts the defensive posture of an incel, railing against allegations of toxic masculinity: “It’s not my fault I was born a man… don’t call me toxic just because I like your butt.” Here, merciless comedy is matched to the album’s most abrasive industrial textures.
Other songs highlight how absurd it is to justify ourselves according to the values of consumerism, ownership, and achievement. Over pulverizing beats and icy synths, “Trophies” likens sexual conquest to the accumulation of bowling accolades. In “Shelf Warmer,” Gordon addresses a thoughtless lover with her most sensual line reading, cooing as if in her paramour’s ear: “Did you get it at the gift shop/ At the gift shop, huh?”
The Collective is a pummeling, claustrophobic record, its 40 minutes unremittingly noisy. In “The Candy House,” Gordon and her producer, Justin Raisen, create beats that sound like gunshots and breaking glass. In the album-closing “Dream Dollar,” Gordon’s guitar sounds as acerbic as a dental drill. There is no reprieve from the album’s bleak outlook, sonically or lyrically.
But if Gordon can’t offer salvation, she at least deserves credit for how acutely she renders our malaise. The important thing about The Collective is that it doesn’t merely identify malicious external forces, but situates them within the human heart itself. Years ago, U2 capped a politically-charged song with this line: “Outside, it’s America.” Gordon’s focus is more intimate, more personal; as one song title puts, “It’s Dark Inside.” With The Collective, Gordon probes that darkness to chilling, masterful effect.
My rating: 8 out of 10
Tierra Whack - World Wide Whack
On what’s being billed as her official debut album, the singular rapper Tierra Whack gets unnervingly honest about her own mental health struggles. Though it’s often playful, the album feels less whimsical than her groundbreaking Whack World EP, rendering vulnerable lyrics with grit and gravity. I wrote about the album for FLOOD Magazine. An excerpt:
The celebrated Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack ends her debut full-length with a song called “27 Club,” a nod toward a macabre piece of rock and roll lore. It was at the age of 27 that Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse each left this earth, along with countless others—and troublingly, Whack once had plans to do the same.
She’s now 28, and the release of World Wide Whack bears witness to a lifetime of mental health struggles that mercifully haven’t had the last word. Remarkable for its interiority, the 15-song album is unflinchingly candid. And while its mere existence is something to celebrate, it avoids pat answers or faux-happy endings. Its final few minutes flirt with suicide as “somethin’ to commit to,” a grim reminder that depression and anxiety remain daily antagonists, lifelong companions. This is a more earthbound Tierra Whack than the one we encountered on Whack World, a collection of minute-long, high-concept singles paired with imaginative videos. With that album Whack effectively preempted the advent of Instagram Reels while proving herself a dioramist without peer. Most of these new songs fall somewhere between two and three minutes, but they still feel like masterpieces in miniature, intimate in their scope and spare in their production.
You can read the rest here.
My rating: 7 out of 10
Three more excellent new releases from essential auteurs:
Orquídeas | Kali Uchis
What Now | Brittany Howard
Polaroid Lovers | Sarah Jarosz