“Come on, play me,” Kim Gordon sings on “Play Me,” the title track and opener of her latest album. The song’s suite of groovy sampled horns sounds like the memory of being in a car, windows down, driving around aimlessly in the summertime and staring at the sun and the clouds until your vision becomes a kaleidoscope of colors. You let yourself fall into the tape hiss noise and the signature sound of Gordon sing-talking about “make-out jams” and inviting you to “feel free.” Everything is amazing.
On Play Me, her third solo album, out now, Gordon does indeed feel freer. If her last album, 2024’s critically acclaimed The Collective, had the feeling of giant machines barreling over the landscape, with its strident bass that low-key blew out your speakers every time you blasted it, on Play Me, the 72-year-old artist has made herself at home in the detritus as she confronts the realities of living in America.
But maybe the most surprising thing this time around is how darkly funny her lyrics are. When she re-recorded her 2024 song “Bye Bye,” Gordon replaced its lyrics—which were half to-do list, half modern take on the Joan Didion packing list (“Cigarettes for Keller, call the vet, call the groomer, call the dog-sitter” and “sleeping pills, sneakers, boots, black dress”)—with words stigmatized by our current administration: “Trauma, privilege, uterus, men who have sеx with men, measles, pеanut allergy, abortion.” The result is funny, in the you-can-laugh-or-you-can-cry sort of way. Elsewhere, on “SUBCON,” she sings: “A house is not a home / it’s a dream / a mirage,” before turning it around on anyone intent to keep on dreaming, asking: “You wanna go to Mars… and then what? Then what? Then what?”
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