[pantophobia]

Kim Gordon Watches Gossip Girl. You Got a Problem with That?

by Andi Teran
June 11, 2009, 12:05 AM

 

Kim Gordon, on stage at the Apple Store SoHo. Photographs by Hamish Robertson.
Last night, Kim Gordon sat in a Soho office, a blue silk dress grazing her knees. Her outfit, complete with elegant low black heels, seemed fit for a tea party, not a rock show. But rock out she did, and hard. Earlier in the evening, she and her band, Sonic Youth, debuted new songs from their 16th album,The Eternal (out June 9 from Matador Records) in front of a packed house of head-bobbing super fans at the Soho Apple Store.
“It’s so quiet, one would think this is a temple to technology,” she deadpanned at the start of the show, then clutched her guitar, kicked an effects pedal, and belted out the lyrics to the new song “Anti-Orgasm.” It’s hard to believe that nearly three decades have passed since Sonic Youth debuted its category-defying brand of noise rock. A lot has changed in 27 years, but on this night—which also happened to be Gordon’s 25th wedding anniversary to her husband and band mate, Thurston Moore—the line between the past and present seemed to disappear. Don't let the skirt and shoes fool you. At 56, an age when most people have settled down, she's still one of New York City's true rock 'n' roll badasses.
"I like the idea of contrasts and the idea of playing against type,” Gordon tells me after the show. “[The notion] that rock is supposed to be hard and leather and stuff like that—I think it’s ridiculous. I’m more intrigued when I see a girl or a woman onstage who you can’t fit into a category.”

 

Photograph by Hamish Robertson.
A devoted wife and mother to a teenage daughter, Gordon is also a creative polymath who dedicates herself to the worlds of fashion and visual arts, in addition to music (in which she was never formally trained). After selling her successful 1990s clothing line X-Girl, which brought femininity to the female skate crowd, she started Mirror/Dash, a “timeless and ageless” line inspired by her own closet (and sold at Urban Outfitters). “It’s a line that's trying to suit my lifestyle, because I don’t live in New York all of the time,” she says. “I travel a lot, and live in a small community.”
She and Moore reside in the liberal college town of Northampton, Massachusetts—just across the river from their friend and fellow indie-rock hero J. Mascis, of Dinosaur Jr. (“We always thought that [Amherst, where he lives] was so exotic—there were cows there, and grass!”) Home life sounds somewhat normal. Gordon’s a vampire fan—of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Let the Right One In variety—and she admits to watching Gossip Girl with Moore and their daughter. (“As bad as they are as role models, the fact that they’re good students has a real impact—it surprisingly counterbalances the other things,” she says of the show's errant characters.)
When Gordon was her daughter’s age, she was inspired by her parent’s collection of jazz records. Billie Holliday gave way to Joni Mitchell, and actresses like Charlotte Rampling and Jane Fonda became inspirations as well. “I still think Jane Fonda is amazing," she says. "There’s something about her voice that I’ve always drawn some inspiration from. You never know what’s going to come out of her.”

 

Thurston Moore. Photograph by Hamish Robertson.
So what about the voices of women just at the beginning of their careers? Who else qualifies as a rock 'n' roll badass these days? Gordon immediately mentions Karen O, the individualist singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but she also mentions Leslie Keffer, a lesser-known noise-music artist from Tennessee. “There’s a lot of women in the noise scene, which I find fascinating because it’s a scene that’s sort of built up from nerdy record-collector boys—it started out that way and it’s somehow blossomed into something else,” Gordon says. “I like things that are unconventional. Things get stylized so quickly. We’ve all gotten used to MTV; we’re all so fashion aware. TV can dictate what you’re supposed to look like in certain circumstances. Music is really supposed to be about freedom.”
As the only woman in a male-dominated band, Kim Gordon has always stood out, her voice emerging from a swirl of cacophonous guitars. When I ask if she ever feels outnumbered, she mentions another new song, called “Sacred Trickster.” “I’m really into the painter Yves Klein, and that’s what he called himself, a ‘sacred trickster.’ I identified with that because I’m not really trained as a musician. I just kind of fell into it."
Perhaps the lyrics of the song give a more concrete answer: “What’s it like to be a girl in a band? I don’t quite understand. That’s so quaint to hear. I feel so faint, my dear … ”

[greenlight]

cool! thanks!