Inside The New Shopping Bag with Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon is one of today's most prolific and visionary musicians. As co-founder of the legendary band Sonic Youth, she has performed worldwide and collaborated with countless influential artists across nearly four decades. And beyond music, she has never stopped evolving, moving fluidly between visual arts, writing, and fashion. We have been fans of Kim since our early teens. The music of Sonic Youth scored our adulthood. Bye Bye, from her previous album ‘The Collective’, was on constant rotation on our playlist. This year she’s back with a great track ‘Dirty Tech’, from her new album PLAY ME.

We got to interview her in the fall of 2024, as part of our book Inside The New Shopping Bag, and with her third solo album on the way, now feels like the right moment to revisit that conversation.

Describe yourself in three words.
Yeah, that’s a real stumper. Three words, I guess I would say: restless, unconventional and sensitive. I was gonna use animal terms, but…

Where are you now?
I’m at my home in Los Angeles. My niece and my great niece are about to come over.

Tell us something about you and SUSAN BIJL.
My introduction was through Carlos and Monique. (Monique works as a chef at SUSAN BIJL, Carlos is Monique's husband: ed.). When they came to visit, they brought me two or three beautiful bags, one really great big one, which I use all the time at the grocery store. And then, just coincidentally, my boyfriend at the time (he’s a curator) went on a tour of museums with other curators in Holland and in Rotterdam. He brought back a silver bag from there that they sold in the gift store. At first, I felt like it was too precious to use. But then, on my last trip, I started using it, putting my purse in it, and just, you know, using it as a tote. And now I’ve just been using it as my purse and just really trashing it, but it’s held up pretty well.

Kim singing her book No Icon for Susan.

What ecological measures would you take if you ruled the world?
Well, I would end all wars. I would find a way to make plastic without forever chemicals, which is probably impossible, but find ways to minimize packaging. Everything is plastic, plastic, plastic.

I guess another thing would be putting rail in America, just fast rail to minimize air travel. And putting power lines underground, which they mostly have through Europe, but we don’t, which causes a lot of fires in California and other places. I could go on, but it’s a big question.

How do you brighten up your existence?
Communicating with friends. Making things, I mean, it can also be depressing. Sometimes just buying some flowers. What part does colour play in that process? I pretty much like all colours. I actually do really like silver a lot.

What music have you been listening to recently?
There’s this experimental rap group called Model Home. These two guys I recently did a collaboration with. I think they’re interesting. There’s not that much experimental rap. And the new Dirty Three record, Love Changes Everything.

What was your biggest loss?
Physical things, such as my hearing loss.
My family. Also, Bernie Sanders losing was a big blow.

What is your ultimate destination?
It would be moving my LA house to New York.

PLAY ME, out March 13, arrives leaner and faster than anything she's made before. Distilled and immediate, expanding her sonic palette to include more melodic beats and the motorik drive of krautrock. Working again with producer Justin Raisen, Gordon set clear intentions from the start. "We wanted the songs to be short. We wanted to do it really fast. It's more focused, and maybe more confident. I always kind of work off of rhythms, and I knew I wanted it to be even more beat-oriented than the last one."

Thematically, the album turns an unflinching eye on the present moment; the collateral damage of the billionaire class, technocratic end-times fascism, and the AI-fueled flattening of culture, “yet it remains, at its core, an interior record.”

– Quotes via JamBase

Above: Kim's new album Play Me, out now on Matador Records!
Cover photo by Jan Bijl.