[Moshe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/arts/music/15play.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=music&ad xnnlx=1213503496-Y/VRyspRtuMEbJfVbbBfqA

June 15, 2008
Playlist| Kim Gordon
Out of This World, Catchy or Good for Driving

By KIM GORDON
After a decade-long hiatus, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth has gotten back together with two of her Free Kitten band mates, Julie Cafritz and Yoshimi P-We. The product of their reunion is “Inherit” (Ecstatic Peace), a blurry, rowdy guitar fest that Ms. Gordon says was influenced by the freak folk movement in western Massachusetts. “We made this album because we were bored,” she said, “and also because Julie has two kids and needed to get out of the house.” “Inherit” was released last month, and though the band’s in no rush to go on a formal tour, Ms. Gordon did allude to “secret shows.” In addition to recording, Ms. Gordon, 55, has been collaborating on “Sensational Fix,” a traveling exhibition of works by visual artists, filmmakers and others who have worked with Sonic Youth that opens on Tuesday in St. Nazaire, in western France. While in New York City this spring to attend an exhibition at KS Art organized by Thurston Moore, her husband and Sonic Youth band mate, Ms. Gordon spoke by phone with Winter Miller about what she’s listening to now.
M.I.A.
When I listen to music, I listen to a whole record. I’m not song oriented. I went to see M.I.A. play at Mount Holyoke, and it was a hall filled with girls, and they were going crazy. I could hear the beats more live, the record is so dense. I like her lyrics. I like that her music is rhythms upon rhythms. It escapes genre. I wouldn’t even call it a hip-hop record, I’d just call it M.I.A. She had this great footage of tribal dancers and these two young girls dancing onstage who were amazing. “Kala” (Interscope) has great grooves — it’s very colorful, lots of texture and density. The rhythms aren’t generic. They’re intuitive and organic.
The Fiery Furnaces
“Widow City” (Thrill Jockey) feels like a song cycle, the way some things repeat themselves. One song seems to lead to the next, almost like an opera. I do a lot of driving, and it’s really good driving music. I tend to make my music choices not based on what’s good to work out to but what’s good to drive to. This record is incessant, it’s so wordy and dense, it wakes you up. It’s almost annoying and irritating to listen to, but it’s also compelling. The lyrics seem kind of obsessive. It pulls you along with it. The lyrics are fragments of meaning that you could maybe relate to, but I don’t mind that I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about. The lyrics are very filmic. There are images that don’t make sense. It’s kind of an act of suspended disbelief listening to it. I like that it’s not typical female singing, being kind of a nonsinger myself.
Karen Dalton
She came out of the folk scene in the early ’60s. She was very influential on Bob Dylan and that whole Greenwich Village scene. She lived in Colorado, sang at a coffeehouse, and lived with her daughter out in the mountains in a cabin. She was eccentric. “Cotton Eye Joe: The Loop Tapes — Live in Boulder — 1962” (Delmore Recordings) was never released. It’s archival stuff that was recorded by the guy who owned the coffeehouse. You can hear in the recording that she’s playing in a small room, maybe 10 people. I like the intimacy of the record. It’s very melancholy. She had an out-of-this-world voice. She had a sad life, she had substance problems. For whatever reason she didn’t seek the limelight and was into just living life, as opposed to Dylan. She was no rock star.
Black Mountain
I just heard them today for the first time in the car. I think they come from Vancouver and the West South Side scene. “In the Future” (Jagjaguwar) sounds a little early Fairport Convention mixed with Nazareth, but then the record changed and got into some quieter things that were unexpected. At first I thought this is catchy, like the New Pornographers, but then it had a lot of variables, and that surprised me. It started as one kind of record and became less accessible, which I liked. I like music that’s not predictable.
Charalambides
Charalambides is Christina and Tom Carter. She’s definitely influenced by Karen Dalton and a lot of the English and American folk singers of the ’60s and ’70s. Christina has a beautiful voice, clear and bell-like. They put out a lot of records, and she also puts out small editions of her own records. On a lot of her stuff she did a lot of held tones, now she integrates words. “Likeness” (Kranky) is the most accessible record I’ve heard of theirs. I’ve heard her influence on lots of women in the experimental underground music scene. I never heard anyone quite as vulnerable and as strong. It’s kind of magical. She’s hugely influential, but most people haven’t heard of her. I never get tired of listening to it. It’s fresh every time I put it on.

[Androol]

"I tend to make my music choices not based on what’s good to work out to"

Im just going to pretend she does anyway

[Dead-Air]

Interesting that she's getting so into folk stuff. Given that Thurston has been leaning that way more too as demonstrated by Trees Outside the Academy, one wonders if that influence might crop up in a big way on the next SY album.