Album of the week: Kim Gordon – 'Play Me'

Krautrock. Rage-rap. Footwork. Skeletal techno. You can’t say Kim Gordon hasn’t been living her best musical life in her solo career. In the 15 years since the messy dissolution of Sonic Youth, rent asunder by musical and personal partner Thurston Moore’s infidelity, she’s roamed far and free from the alt.rock/proto-grunge terroir of that ground-zero New York guitar band.

You can’t say she isn’t having pointed fun either. The already-iconic lead song on 2024’s The Collective was ‘Bye Bye’. Over a trap beats-meets-noise-rock bed, she intoned her packing list for travelling. Altogevva now: “Milk thistle. Advil. Black jeans. Blue jeans. Cardigan. Pyjamas, silk. Eye mask. Ear plugs. Sleeping pills. Black dress. White tee. iBook. Power cord. Medications. Bella Freud. YSL. Eckhaus Latta. Eyelash curler. Vibrator. Teaser.” The result: the TSA airport patdown anthem we didn’t know we needed.

Now, on her superb third solo album Play Me, the 72-year-old continues that playfulness, with added razor-sharp observational edge. She opens with the grimy, inner-city jazz of the title track, and this time the listicle lyrics are taken from Spotify playlists: “Makeout jams… Neon cowgirl… Easy rider... ‘’70s hippie... Spring pop…… Rich popular girl… Villain mode… On wheels… Chill vibes…”

As for Gordon’s music: you can, the DSP (Digital Service Provider) (you knew that) tells me, find it on their Oblique playlist, where that means “angular, asymmetrical”. Which, while not unreasonable, does barely sufficient justice to the engaging, transfixing brilliance of Play Me. She and repeat collaborator Justin Raisen (also producer for Charli XCX and Yves Tumor) wanted these songs to be short. Fast. Focused. Tight. That they've done, with the album’s 12 songs clocking in at a (surely deliberate) one second shy of 30 minutes.

‘Girl With a Look’ is a New Wave bop throwing, yes, angular shapes over gauzy synth. ‘Busy Bee’ is a turbulent post-rock jam that mixes late-period Radiohead with Aphex Twin-style skree and echoey drums from Dave Grohl. Lyrically it includes a tweaked sample of Gordon and her old bandmate in Free Kitten, Julia Cafritz, talking in the 1990s. Funnily enough, their three-decades-old quotes from the depths of the era’s rock patriarchy feel relevant: “Those boys are lucky that we broke up before they made it big… Or they’d have a lawsuit on their hands… Man, I think you should still sue their ass… Maybe we will!”

Because these punchy songs have punchy messages, too, about personal politics and actual politics, about tech dystopia and the flailing mayhem of Gordon’s homeland. The itchy, glitchy ‘No Hands’ laments an America where there’s “no hands on the wheel, it’s a steal”. On throbbing sub-bass lament ‘Subcon’, in pitch-shifted vocals and haiku-tight lyrics, she takes aim at the vainglory of the broligarchy (“You wanna go to Mars, and then what?”). In the pitch-black satire of ‘Post Empire’, she breaks from the sprechgesang to sing, dreamily, “Love what you’ve done with the empire”, before adding, just to check: “We’re post, right?” We’re crying with laughter. Or laughing through tears. One of the two.

Play Me ends with ‘Byebye25!’, a sequel, listicle and protest song all in one: it runs down ideas or phrases from Trump’s “banned words” list. You know, things he doesn’t believe in, and certainly won’t be funding, or even allowing to exist, in his big beautiful US.

From the top: “Mental health… Gulf of Mexico… Gay… Bird flu… Immigrants… Intersex… Diversity… Climate change… They/them… Tile drainage… Measles… Abortion… Women…”

This is Play Me, already the most vital album of 2026. Make America Gordon Again.

Play Me is out now via Matador Records.