0:00
Kim Gordon, welcome to Apple Music.
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0:01
Thank you for stepping into the studio to have a chat and talk about this new record in life and what's going on. How are you? Pretty good.
0:06
You know, just starting to rehearse and um I've just been kind of busy also with everything that seems to happen at once.
0:16
I feel like this music in rehearsal, at least, or getting ready to perform it live, um fun.
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This record is easier than the last record.
0:24
The last record was a real puzzle, um cuz you know, the band doesn't play on the uh doesn't record on the On the music, yeah.
0:32
Yeah, so that record was a real puzzle figuring out.
0:35
This is a lot more straightforward.
0:37
When you were in the studio working with Justin Raisen on this music, and to your point, there's a little bit of of separation was a lot of separation going on now.
0:44
One is a recording experience and then one is an interpretation of that for live and it becomes something else.
0:49
So, just getting into the creative side of it before it becomes a live show, um how did you and Justin land in this place where distortion is beautiful and the drums are is, you know, you've tapped into this wonderful program space and it's just the whole thing of the last three records has been building and I just would love to go back to where it kind of started for you and Justin on day one.
1:10
Yeah, I'm pretty motivated by rhythm and I've always liked rap music and um you know, I'm not like a real singer.
1:20
>> [laughter] >> So, um you know, I use things like space and dynamics and things like that and um I don't know, like we just kind of um somehow like uh it's unlikely. We're an unlikely pair.
1:40
But, um he somehow gets uh my sensibility and he does come from sort of a punk rock background. >> tell.
1:50
And uh he's really up for trouble, you know, like he's up for breaking things down and and uh screwing with people's expectations and especially like he kind of gets a kick out of kind of putting me into sort of kind of like rap situation.
2:12
Like, you know, like, "Take this."
2:15
So, what do you think of this?
2:16
Um and um So, I don't know.
2:20
It's kind of um and then I like bringing distortion um and my sensibility to to it.
2:30
You know, like, a lot of I think when rappers reference rock, a lot of it is is kind of like more conventional rock and roll.
2:39
And so, it for me that actually doesn't It's not so interesting.
2:43
You're a fan of rap music, and I feel like um when I got to know you through Sonic Youth, that was at a time when rap music was really finding its audience in an uncompromising way.
2:52
And it's always been uncompromising out form, but obviously as it became more commercial, it's found multiple lanes to reach people.
2:56
Back then, I felt like um you know, Public Enemy was the most successful band on the planet in rap music at that time, and they're one of the most uncompromising in the history of music.
3:05
And it must have been just really exciting for you to see it changing in real time and be at the center of that because you and Sonic Youth and subsequently right up to the present day, it's it's not an uncomfortable place for you creatively to be.
3:17
I feel like you on that bill in any festival made total sense when I was in it in the '90s. You know what I mean?
3:23
Must have been a beautiful time thinking back on it, watching that just take shape.
3:26
Yeah, it was exciting um because we were, you know, suddenly having a bigger budget to record with and getting more recognition and um you know, it's been It was such a gradual uh process evolution with Sonic Youth, you know, sort of looking for more distribution, and which is why we signed a major label, but um we didn't entirely get that.
3:54
[laughter] Um, but we somehow did it did elevate our name in a way that we we didn't really expect.
4:02
And um, it was just really perseverance, but it it's kind of like you know, when we first started and I think a lot of bands feel like this.
4:16
So, like even if you're in the middle of New York City, you can feel like you're in the most like banal part of a American suburb, >> [snorts] >> you know, thinking of all the the cool things that happened that are over, that you missed, and how to be a part of that or how do you how do you get there?
4:42
And and just kind of having this feeling of uh you know, reaching for something or just wanting to to kind of make a mark somehow like that makes a difference.
4:57
And and I feel like I still have that feeling of just like reaching and I'm really hitting and I'm never anywhere really.
5:09
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I know what you mean.
5:09
It's um, it's you sort of one foot in what you to your point what you missed and then the rest of it is focused on what can I contribute and how can I leave a mark on that.
5:19
And I getting jumping from then to now listening to what you've made on this music, um, did did it surprise you as much as anybody else when you listen back to it and find out where you are as a creative and the kind of music you're making?
5:31
Do you get a kick and a surprise from it? Yes and no.
5:34
I mean, I'm kind of just doing using all the kind of vocabulary of things that I was initially interested in when I first moved to New York, what inspired me to want to play music to begin with like with no wave [clears throat] bands you know, bands like DNA and Mars and um Glenn Branca and um yeah, so in a way I haven't really changed that much.
6:04
Did you even realize it at the time?
6:06
I'm not going to stay back there cuz I want to get back to here, but it they were willing to twine to me his whole one life.
6:09
Um where you would sit there and go, "Huh?
6:13
Where we started and what inspired us and what made us want to make music and we're headlining a festival in front of 60,000 people and everyone's wearing our t-shirt.
6:20
This is interesting how things slowly start to seep into consciousness that seems unrealistic."
6:25
It's amazes me all the time the way people use the word noise.
6:31
>> [laughter] >> Because that was a derogatory term when we were um you know, in the '80s.
6:35
Like it was like we were dental drill music.
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That's what they were calling it. >> Unlistenable.
6:42
And um you know, and uh Thurston um curated this uh festival called the Noise Fest because at this art space cuz there was nowhere to play and and there was a great quote um from the owner of um Hurrah's, this club uptown.
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They were closing and he said "Well, all the bands just sound like noise now."
7:08
>> [laughter] >> That's where we got the name for that.
7:11
But, you know, now it's kind of people making hip hop or listening to like shoegaze music. >> For sure.
7:19
>> It's it's really interesting.
7:19
This album in particular, when did you decide that you wanted to follow up The Collective which was obviously a pretty eye-opening experience for everybody and did and and to your point, you know, you solved a lot of problems with that, how to play it live and it reached people and um what when did you go, "Okay, let's let's make another one."
7:38
Justin just kept bugging me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:40
When you When you to come in? I've got some ideas.
7:45
And um you know, it wasn't I guess um at the time I mean I did have some um um potential art shows on the horizon, but you know, I didn't really have anything else to do.
7:58
>> [laughter] >> Do you like being in the studio?
8:00
Do you enjoy that process? I do, yeah.
8:01
It's It's kind of um I mean I I approach it pretty performatively, I think, and um I don't sit there with him and wade through things.
8:13
I kind of hate listening to my voice like that.
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So, you know, I'll go in, he'll you know, like he'll send me stuff and I'll see what there is that I feel like I can do something on, and then write some lyrics and um go in, usually put some guitar down because, you know, it's like a a painter having a white canvas.
8:39
You need to dirty it up before you can do anything on it.
8:46
You know, and then I'll sometimes just I don't know exactly how the lyrics are going to go, but um you know, and I'll improvise often while I'm doing it, and other things will come out of my mouth, and I'm like, "Where the hell did that come from?"
9:02
>> And do you ever listen back to the music that you make, or do you set it free?
9:05
When you've done it, it's done, the process is done.
9:06
You know, I'll be excited about it.
9:08
I mean, so I will listen a few times, but then yeah, like I won't listen to it, and I I don't even want to unlearn the lyrics.
9:19
So, you do have a >> [laughter] >> So, you So, you you have a complicated relationship with your voice as an instrument?
9:23
Well, I just kind of just start thinking, you know, that's dumb, or I don't know, you know, like I I No, I like the sound of it.
9:32
Actually, yeah, do like the sound of my voice, but I don't know, I just don't want to get to the point where then I start being self-conscious about what I'm doing. And It's a short window. Yeah.
9:43
I mean, this record was done last May. Wow.
9:49
>> We did it really fast and um So, it's hard to it's been hard to keep excited.
9:58
>> [laughter] >> I feel like that's very much in line with how things are.
10:00
The relationship that you've developed on this these songs with technology is really interesting and and and exciting and kind of vicarious to listen to.
10:11
Like on Dirty Tech, the way you're talking about it almost like, "Okay, if it does have a mind of its own, then like anything else with a mind of its own, it's going to have intentions that I'm either going to be submissive to or otherwise." It's fascinating to me.
10:24
Um can we just elaborate a little bit on that and what and what went into that song and your thoughts about that?
10:28
Because it is just the way you're describing tech is like I think part of the problem is we still think tech's over here. Mhm. And it's really not. It's here. Yeah.
10:34
I mean, people I think I've always thought technology is cool and sexy and seductive and always kind of welcomed it.
10:48
Um you know, from the time of like the idea of um streamlining. Yeah, efficiency.
10:53
Even in the the way something looks, you know, um like in the atomic age.
10:58
And [snorts] then recently I uh I was kind of rereading these D. H.
11:03
Lawrence books and the characters are actually sort of bemoaning post-industrial life and you know, after World War I and oh god, now we're you know, people are going to factories and working all the time and it wasn't they didn't know that that that's what they were buying into Mhm. feeling.
11:29
And I was like, "Wow, that's really interesting."
11:33
I first read those books for the sexual >> [laughter] >> excitement as a teenager, but now, you know, it's actually Anyway, it's I just thought it was um interesting how it was so relevant to today and and um you know, we do have a complicated relationship with technology.
11:51
It's kind of we wanted it and wanted it and wanted it and without actually knowing like it just came so fast.
12:01
It came faster and faster and faster and and you're right, it is it's here.
12:05
Feel like we've been a frog in a pot of boiling water and now it's really hot.
12:11
So, the relationship with it is not maybe what we thought it would be.
12:16
I saw this wonderful I wouldn't even call it a documentary.
12:21
It's just a wonderful collection of of of images and thoughts from back in 1995 that Timer Davis has made called Big Summer.
12:30
Which I saw and you play a part in that because you're on a tour in Australasia with Sonic Youth.
12:35
Uh I was at that show in Melbourne. Really? Yeah, I saw that show.
12:39
And I was at And I was at the Auckland show that you played with Foo Fighters, I think, at Logan Campbell Centre just before you went on that tour. Okay.
12:46
What struck me about that and the reason I raise it is because it speaks to this idea of what life was before.
12:51
I'm We're both old enough now to remember what the summer felt like before the internet and distraction.
12:57
Have you seen the documentary? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I bet.
13:01
What's Isn't it amazing how everyone's reading?
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And I know that seems like a weird thing to say.
13:06
Everyone's reading something interesting because we're not on our phones. Yeah.
13:11
>> And when you pack your bag to go away, you take a camera, maybe, and whatever and a book. It's funny.
13:15
Yeah, we actually we did a lot of touring with Mudhoney in in Australia and they would make fun of us [laughter] because Cuz you're readers? We were reading.
13:25
Yes, because [laughter] you we got got a group of readers here. Yeah.
13:30
And they were such partyers.
13:32
What are you guys going to do? Go read a book?
13:34
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, exactly.
13:35
But, you know, did did it Did you have the same feeling when you watched it that it was like, "Wow, really within a couple of years everything had kind of changed and we were really in the internet age and it felt like we didn't have that presence."
13:47
Yeah, well, I was also surprised.
13:47
Um you know, she shot it with this Hi8 camera that was pretty high definition and the colors looked amazing.
13:58
>> Amazing and the sound, too.
13:58
The sound was incredible and everyone looked really good.
14:02
Well, everyone is really young, but it also it didn't, you know, like overly define Yeah. the imperfections.
14:09
But, yeah, it was it was just that last sort of glimmer of what it would be like for us.
14:15
Yeah, that was Yeah, before the internet, it's true.
14:17
Getting back to this wonderful record.
14:19
Uh where did the Was there a sort of starting point for you on this album?
14:23
Was there a song or a piece of music that you made where it was like, "Okay, we're off to the races. This is good." Do you remember?
14:27
I think Dirty Tech was actually maybe the first song and yeah, it just really uh it it all really came together very quickly.
14:37
We wanted to do short songs kind of like no wave songs almost. Yeah, yeah.
14:39
I guess I've been surprised like in a couple of reviews um that I've seen they refer to it as a kind of a pop record and um I don't know, I just didn't really think of it that way.
14:56
I mean, I don't care, but I I mean, I really don't like genres and I just sort of um thought that was kind of interesting.
15:05
Did you um have any desire when Sonic Youth finished, did you feel compelled to make music or did you see it as an opportunity to go explore other things that you perhaps hadn't had time to go do because it had been such a full-time occupation, you know?
15:16
Well, I definitely didn't think I was going to make a solo record.
15:19
I I had this um um improv-based duo with Bill Nace called Body Head and that's mainly what I thought was going to be my musical outlet and um and other than that just pursuing uh visual art more intensely.
15:41
Um as a practice and yeah, wasn't you know, Justin when I moved out here I I met him by accident and and yeah, he just kept bugging me.
15:51
>> [laughter] >> Were you excited about moving back to Los Angeles?
15:53
I'd imagine based on the timeline cuz I'm a parent my kids are 1917 that it was probably around the time when you weren't so full-time parenting as much.
16:00
So, was that kind of the motivation for like coming back to the West Coast and changing the scenery?
16:03
Uh yeah, well Coco was in um college and so I didn't have to be in Northampton anymore which we had sort of moved up there as a kind of like a good community to raise a kid in and close to New York and and I still have very very my closest friends there but um yeah, I just I had to leave and there were things about LA I missed. >> Mhm.
16:31
As someone who I kind of like and I know you spent a lot of your childhood in Los Angeles and California a little bit of traveling but I see so much of what you do artistically as being this kind of city experience.
16:40
I feel like Sonic Youth really reflects in your music and you really reflects this idea of like, okay, I'm in it.
16:47
And um I remember when when I when I'd read somewhere years ago that you'd moved into a more sort of like quieter area to raise Coco and to build a different kind of lifestyle.
16:56
I thought I wonder if I ever get to ask you this question and I've always wanted to ask you to sort of how that felt and what the motivation was behind that as somebody who probably has taken so much from an urban experience and from a citywide experience and what this what prompted the decision to have a quieter experience from a parenting point of view?
17:12
I couldn't figure out how to be a parent in New York.
17:15
[laughter] >> [gasps] >> I just I don't know. The nannies at the park.
17:23
The competition with schools. I don't know.
17:25
I just We had friends that lived up in Northampton and there's kind of like a small experimental music scene.
17:31
And J Mascis lived up there in Amherst and we thought that was exotic. The cows were exotic.
17:40
And it was kind of interesting after living somewhere where you're right in the center to suddenly not be in the center anymore.
17:49
And you know, it's beautiful up there.
17:51
It's sort of so much nature and it was The thing I missed the most was actually the art world.
18:00
And we commuted back and forth to work in New York and our studio was in New York.
18:05
So um we kind of um you know, we're still kind of in the city in a way.
18:14
Just to talk about your artwork for a second.
18:16
Um and if there is any commonality between the way that you look at or feel music and find yourself in the middle of making music versus what you do in your art.
18:25
It could be collaborative, too, but obviously it leans into more of an um a self-expression.
18:29
May there may not be adjusting around you when you're deciding to do more visual art.
18:33
So how that begins and where that sort of if there's a sort of common space that you find yourself in where like, "Oh, okay.
18:40
I think I have something to say away from music."
18:42
I guess a way of thinking more internally and actually not having to be in public and just kind of a nice nice kind of I don't know, something that feels it I'm like it's not less complicated.
18:58
It's harder actually for me.
19:02
Um cuz I know more about art.
19:03
I don't know anything about music, really.
19:05
And but it's some I always tried to keep them separately, but they've sort of come more and more together.
19:13
When you listen back to the record before you let it go, was there a piece of music or were there songs on there that that that really uncovered something that you didn't realize you felt? Were there moments?
19:23
I know it comes from a subconscious, but was were there surprises for you, like a song that was like, "Okay, I've got to listen to myself right now.
19:31
That's something that's really come out of nowhere for me.
19:32
I don't even remember recording that."
19:33
I mean, uh that song, Not Today, I feel like uh that sort of when I did it, it was surprising even how I sang it or I love the vocal on that song so much because it's it's it's not it's rare that you that it becomes more of a melodic experience, and yet it's beautiful. Yeah, I don't know.
19:52
I just don't know where it came from, and um so that was a surprise at the time, and um in a way, I guess it was a sort of about um transcending something.
20:06
You have some shows coming out with Bad Talking, and you were saying you're in rehearsal and doing that.
20:11
Um do you enjoy that side of this?
20:15
Obviously, we don't probably don't I don't know. Do you need to do shows?
20:16
Do you do them cuz you want to do them?
20:19
Like, what's your relationship with it? That's a good question.
20:21
I ask that >> [laughter] >> of myself all the time.
20:26
Um once I'm in it, I really I do enjoy performing.
20:32
Um but I'm kind of still because we're rehearsing and our rehearsals are even broken up because I have to go to New York and sell the show, and I I'm not letting myself get excited yet about the tour. Yeah.
20:50
I um have thought about, like, well, what if I just didn't go out and tour?
20:55
You know, it it just also gets harder and harder to tour and make money, and um and I don't love having people work for me.
21:08
Um I mean I love the girls in my band and we it is like this other family and I've really tried to make it feel like we're a band.
21:19
I mean it's been easy to do that.
21:21
They're great and but it's it's not something that I was I had to get used to.
21:27
You know, it was I just wasn't how am I how's this going to be and even initially I have with the first record like playing with people that I aside from Sarah the guitar player I didn't know and it was just all a new experience for me.
21:43
Yeah, that must have been the first time that actually ever happened [sighs] cuz it's all been purposeful and by design up until that point.
21:50
>> Yeah, it's all been kind of organic and and um so you know, I just try not to really think about it too much.
21:57
Um but I uh I'm sure it will really love performing once I get on that stage.
22:07
[laughter] Yeah, of course and this music is is like so dynamic and exciting and I just love the I mean I the first show that I saw out of two years of not going to shows was a Playboi Carti concert.
22:18
My kid dragged me to the forum to see Playboi Carti who I'm a fan of.
22:25
I think he's like as an artist at least I think he's a very very exciting sort of artist and the noise that was coming out of the speakers I was not prepared for because I'd been off out of practice.
22:35
And I wasn't prepared for the energy of the crowd.
22:37
I wasn't prepared for any of it and it was the first time in a long time I sort of blacked out for the first two minutes like I did as a teenager at a concert. Oh, wow.
22:42
I was just like woah I don't really know what's going on.
22:44
I just know it's really really exciting and there's so much of that spirit in this music and the distortion and the chaos that you've created with Justin.
22:53
Do you listen to that stuff as well or have you stumbled into this world at his recommendation and your taste but does it has it opened that door to that world for you to some of these these musicians?
23:02
You know, he's mentioned him like he said when we first did bye-bye, he was like, "Well, my brother Jerry and I made this for Flavor Flav or Cardi, but we thought it was too wild for him.
23:15
I said, "Let's give it to Kim."
23:18
>> [laughter] >> I love that.
23:20
So, I mean, I have listen like I I kind of dip into it, but I it's kind of something I mean to go listen to, you know, but I I don't know.
23:30
I'm always actually disappointed in the records.
23:31
Interesting because to me I hear such a connection in the way that they are painting in the way that as a fan and you are painting. >> Yeah.
23:41
Like you are drawing key observations and words that mean something to you. It is like art.
23:47
And you're placing it in a really beautiful way that makes me drawn in.
23:51
One of the criticisms that these artists have had over the years is that they're not technically rapping or they're not stringing sentences together or bars and things that are for for 64 bars.
23:58
They're just taking words and you know. Yeah, that's cool.
24:02
That's what is I like that.
24:02
So, that's the thing is the genre thing is like Yeah, yeah.
24:07
>> Oh, you're supposed to do this.
24:09
>> Yeah, they they're they're not into that.
24:09
Music is just about freedom.
24:13
>> [snorts] >> And uh people forget that.
24:17
>> Do you ever think about life in [snorts] the in a reflective way or are you more is your is your happy happier place to be thinking about what's next? Do you reflect much?
24:27
Are you a reflective person? Half and half. Half and half.
24:32
When you reflect, do you ever think about your journey as a musician or as an artist?
24:35
Do you think about what you achieved with Sonic Youth?
24:37
I mean, as a fan of that band and of you, but of that band, I think about the huge impact it's had on my life.
24:46
Is it one of those things that you have come to accept or does it surprise you that it that where you started versus what you achieved?
24:52
I don't really reflect on it too much.
24:54
Um, it's hard to feel others appreciation for it.
25:04
I um, I am totally surprised at what we achieved and I think it's really hard for bands now.
25:12
Like people don't really know what to do.
25:17
Like nobody wants to get in a van [laughter] and tour endlessly or um, any of those things.
25:21
You know, it's so different now.
25:23
But I mean I'm secretly very happy and um, like uh, something will come up.
25:31
I'll see a video or something will pop up and I'll go, "Oh my god, that that was cool." You know?
25:38
But I I enjoy it quietly and um, yeah.
25:46
Is this a place that you'd like to keep coming back to with Justin?
25:48
I mean, you know, I love this music when a lot of people love this music.
25:53
How does it affect your decision making and what you want to do creatively next?
25:56
Do you feel drawn back into this because of how we feel or is it got to be just like, yeah, I want to do it?
26:02
It is it's very fun um, to work with him.
26:07
But I would like to switch it up somehow, but I'm not sure exactly yet.
26:09
I love this music and listen to, you know, it all the time.
26:14
The new album's fantastic. I'm so happy. Thank you, Kim. Thank you.