(The title is partially inspired by Jennifer Egan’s novel “The Candy House.”) But left turns are business as usual for Gordon, a restlessly curious artistic polymath who has never settled for the conventional, expected or familiar. Not many artists welcome their 70s with a new album, and virtually none with a record as blistering and gloriously strange as “The Collective,” which has more in common with postmillennial SoundCloud rap than the dulcet tones of 21st-century indie-rock.
It is very basic and goes as follows: Bonne fête à toi. This final version is sung to the traditional birthday tune and is actually the québécois (Quebec) French Happy Birthday song. “Because I’d actually worked that day and felt a finality to the project, it was really satisfying.” French Birthday Song 4: Bonne fête à toi. “It was kind of great to have done that on my 70th birthday,” she said and laughed from behind tinted sunglasses. But also, as Gordon explained on a video call from her book-strewn home in late February, it doubled as a celebration of finishing her second solo album, “The Collective.” Gordon’s 70th birthday party last year, though, was another story entirely.įor one thing, it was in Los Angeles, the city she’d grown up in and returned to in 2015. Goin under, rats in the cellar Goin under, skins turnin yellow Nose is runny, losin my connection Losin money, getting no affection New York City blues East side, West side blues Throw me in the slam Catch me if you can Believe That youre wearing Tearing me apart Safe complaining, cause everythings rotten Go insanin, and aint. Plenty of people she loved attended her 60th birthday bash in New York, but she still felt unmoored. The day she turned 60, the artist and musician Kim Gordon felt, by her own admission, “shipwrecked.” She had recently gone through a painfully high-profile divorce from her husband of 27 years, Thurston Moore, and in the wake of their split, their band Sonic Youth - the freewheeling and fearlessly experimental group that almost single-handedly defined the sound and ethos of American alternative rock - ended its 30-year-run.