Turns out last night's band (drummer Madi Vogt, bassist Emily Retsas, and guitarist Sarah Register) was really a BAND. None of them appear to be on the new album (and all of them appear to be closer to Coco than Kim in age; there was actually mention of Black Flag in this regard, but in the sense of it being a shrewd move). But they sure gelled, playing something far closer to a Sonic Youth-style rock show than I expected; since the records don't sound much like Sonic Youth, I figured she was practicing distanciation from that aspect of her past, and had expected her to play up the trip-hop elements of the sound. Nope! The encore, an unreleased song called "Cigarette" was maybe the most Sonic Youth-like item in the evening, seeing Kim venturing very much into what one might think of as "Lee and Thurston territory" on guitar: textural noise jams with Register that were trance-inducing but not at all trip-hoppy. Mostly Kim was off guitar, in fact, but she was very much on it for "Busy Bee", "Bye Bye" (and perhaps some of the other later songs?), and during those moments, there was no confusing which band she had spent the majority of her career in.
Setlist here, no Sonic Youth on it. The night didn't need it! Visuals, some very entertaining, swirled behind the stage throughout (yes, I shot some vid).
Another thing that came clear is, I'm going to have to sit down with Kim's lyric sheets at some point, because, as my wife Erika observed, the show was very obviously an "art piece" and Play Me has some thematic depth, which I have simply not done justice to. (Something also true of The Collective and No Home Record, which also got repped near the end of the set. Like, what do industrial metal supplies have to do with cookie butter? No idea!)
But there is obviously enough of a future in what Kim is doing -- I wouldn't be surprised if we get to see her again in the next couple of years, perhaps with this very unit-- that it looks to be worth the investment of effort. I had picked up the album unconvinced of that, to be totally honest. I'm trying to cut down!
But last night convinced me.
As for my autograph whoring, Kim did not come out into the venue after the show, and we were told she likely wouldn't, so Bob and I joined a small cluster of people haunting her tour bus, including local artist Michelle Sound, second from the right (ask her about her David Byrne stories; she'd also been on hand when Gordon received an honorary PhD from Emily Carr University back in 2018, as part of a group that included another artist I'd met, Pierre Hebert). We didn't end up exchanging emails or such, but if you stand around on the sidewalk with a cluster of strangers for long enough, you'll start talking to each other. Weirdly, at some point I looked down and saw that a download card for (Inuk artist) Elisapie's Ballad of the Runaway Girl was lying on the sidewalk, which absolutely positively must have been mine, tucked by mistake into a Kim Gordon album cover. Both Michelle and her friend Meghan were Indigenous and, by odd coincidence, had been at Elisapie's Vogue show last year, which I'd interviewed Elisapie about. So I gave them the download card! I mean, I've already got the album on my phone, as part of having done press.
(Trivially, Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corporation dug Elisapie when I pointed her out to him, apropos of a conversation we had about the Residents' Eskimo tour, but the band won't be coming to Vancouver now that it's been rescheduled. The closest show, for those of you still willing to cross the border, will be in Tacoma in November).
For a long time, that's all that seemed would transpire: "Indigenous girl gets free Inuk artist download". We got bored enough we took a selfie. The tour bus got packed and pizzas (from La Pache) were delivered and loaded inside and we waited, telling each other stories. Sound asked one of the roadies if he was wearing bowling shoes, but it just looked like that from the back. When Sarah Register, recognizable for the large shock of blonde hair, came out, I asked (since nothing else was goin' on) if she was on Play Me, proferring a Sharpie at her, and it turns out she wasn't, though, shit Sarah, ya coulda told me you were on The Collective; I had that in my stack too!
Kim finally came out. Maybe I'm projecting, but it felt like I could see her shudder ("oh fuck, it's fans!") and steel herself to apologize and head straight for the bus. It kinda looked like the inner tension you feel, seeing someone at a party that you have history with, but that you don't necessarily want to talk to, and you visibly sort of hover between heading to the appies table and going over and saying hello: pretty touch-and-go for a second there. Maybe I'm just projecting, but in my fantasy, the element that won her over was that, besides Play Me and a fistful of Sharpies, I had SYR 5 in my hand, which I figured was the album that she would most be won over to see, since it was a fairly significant step outside the usual parameters of Sonic Youth for her, featuring DNA's Ikue Mori and DJ Honda and Kim very much front-and-centre, but is not something that everyone will own (it's actually the only SYR release in my collection!).
In fact, I had brought the album covers for my entire Sonic Youth collection to the venue, but I didn't necessarily think seeing someone holding Goo in their hand would have the same effect (just too obvious). That was the theory, anyway. But underneath Play Me and SYR 5, I did have one Sonic Youth record I had prioritized getting signed: Evol. Because if you're going to get ONLY ONE Sonic Youth record signed by Kim...
Note: those of you who do know Kim from her current material and not the Sonic Youth back catalogue, go here. (That's a link to the "Shadow of a Doubt" vid, on Evol, and the first thing I heard of Kim's that blew me away. Great video, too). That album seemed too varied when I first had it, but has grown in my estimation and I think is probably the best place for a Sonic Youth noob to start, and maybe their masterpiece; on bandcamp here.
Kim politely posed for a few selfies for the other lurkers (I do not ask for selfies, generally; I do not understand them, especially if the entirety of the interaction you've had with the artist is to ask for said selfie; what does that even mean?). She signed a book for Bob that I didn't even know existed, Is It My Body?, named for an Alice Cooper song that Sonic Youth covered, illustrating it with a quick cross that I think was a riff on the old Sonic Life design. Which is actually pretty piquant, given that that design is tattooed onto her ex-; I guess he doesn't get exclusive claim!
I also mentioned, in the one minute in which I pestered her, that Steve Shelley had signed my Evol, and that I'd done some press for him, and while I may have misread it, I thought I saw a flicker of interest there: "Oh really?" (Kim, if you're interested, I'll happily pitch my editors about a story with you; Steve has my contact deets). I didn't press it, even though I had a whole stack of other records that I could have led her over to; she had given her all onstage, and I had my Evol scribbled upon, so I thanked her and stood down.
(by Allan MacInnis, last year at the Rickshaw)
Speaking of Steve Shelley, though: he is the only member of Sonic Youth who I HAVE seen cover a Sonic Youth song, doing "Starpower" at the Rickshaw with Shelley Orcutt Miller. Steve is playing (as part of Winged Wheel) in Portland on August 20th (and maybe other shows TBA?), and has just released a new album on his Vampire Blues label, Veld by Sick Gazelle, with another album coming up in August with Riviera Gaz (first single here).
Steve Shelly with Riviera Gaz, by Lucca Miranda
layered saxophone and processed vocalizations from Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), submerged textures and heavy guitar zones from Eric Block (Veloce), with eternally outstretching drums from Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), steering the band’s improvised pieces through stretches of formlessness and meaning. Their 2019 debut album Odum captured the spontaneity and excitement of the trio’s group chemistry, but with their second LP Veld, they expand on the charge of their debut by bringing Douglas McCombs (Tortoise) into the fold on bass, finding new levels of clarity and structure without ever losing the spark of the jam.
I have no idea what Thurston or Lee or up to this year, but Steve's certainly keeping busy. Portland is too far away for me, though. Anyone want to bring him back to Vancouver?
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