Kim Gordon has always been into dissonance. Blistering Fenders pressed against the waistband of white glitter shorts. Discordant notes cracking panes of melody. Big art book terms dwarfed by bursts of emotion. It’s arguably the word that best defines Gordon’s body of work—the music, but also her visual art and fashion forays. Four decades of prodigious art-making in opposition to harmony—and sometimes just in opposition. In her 2015 memoir, Girl in a Band, she explains the dissonance in Sonic Youth’s music as a reflection of the world, “Our music was realistic, and dynamic, because life was that way, filled with extremes.”
All of which is why it’s striking that now, at 65, Gordon is pushing dissonance to new extremes. This week, Body/Head, the experimental guitar band she formed in 2012 with Bill Nace, releases its second record, The Switch. It’s comprised of five songs—or, perhaps more accurately, riffs—each its own crackling thunderstorm. Or execution via electric chair. Or excavated city. Suffice to say there are a lot dark images your mind might conjure.
When spending even a small amount of time around Gordon, you begin to see the world through the context of contrast. You, for instance, might notice the viscosity of the New York summer air and the busyness of the streets, with their overflowing abundance of people and commercial trappings. And if Gordon has taken you and Nace to see a retrospective on the multi-hyphenate downtown renegade Jack Smith’s work, you might juxtapose modern New York with Smith’s New York, of the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s.
As we wander into the show (“Art Crust of Spiritual Oasis”), full of exotic costumes, irreverent drawings and Smith’s “boiled lobster color slideshows,” Gordon is brought back. “Downtown New York when I first moved here felt deserted,” she says. “It had a vibe. Whereas now, you have to go to a museum. It's all compartmentalized.”
But then, hardly a moment later, perhaps denying herself the glimmer of nostalgia, she adds: “I mean, you could take New York decadence for granted. But actually, to have a show like this now is really important. Just because how backwards the world is going.”
GQ: Have you been thinking about those themes—more than Trump, the mood of the country—in your own work?
Bill Nace: I think [The Switch] is a really dense record. I don't know if it has anxiety in it to listen to, but I think it is really claustrophobic. Which I think is really reflective of right now.
Kim Gordon: Yeah, it's kind of like it's a weight pushing you back down.
What was inspiring you when you were making it?
BN: New Twin Peaks was a big one that I was really into. I didn't even think of this, but it is in there compositionally. We're not even playing in song form at all like we did on the first one. It's really just weird dream logic where you dip in and then it just goes.
Kim, it always seems like you're reacting against something, whether it's baggy clothes or consumerism. Is there anything that you're reacting against right now?
KG: I guess I was trying to create an atmosphere. It's more of escapism. Which we shouldn't be doing. [laughs] I mean, I've done a series of protest paintings. But music, it's just really hard to say because it's such a constant feeling. We did a couple performances after Trump was elected and I remember people were so freaked out. I remember just feeling like people really need this. It seemed really sped up. It felt really good to be performing. Like, here's another reality, even if it's abstract.
I watched the recording of your Saint Vitus show. And it almost looks like you guys are possessed, operating in a sort of haunted place. So I wonder if you feel like you enter that place and what it's like.
KG: Well you've heard of noise baths.
BN: I can't stand still before or after I play.
KG: It is more like going into a car wash.
I'm curious how performing and existing in that dark space on stage relates to death. Does it make processing it easier in any way?
BN: It sounds like a dark space, but it doesn't feel like a dark space to me... Does learning how to play music on stage make it make it easier to die? Is that what you mean?
Maybe. I guess I'm wondering if you've gained any new perspectives.
KG: It's too soon to tell.
BN: I think it's all in there. There's probably fear in there. And then all that stuff hopefully is coming out.
KG: That's an interesting way to think about it. If it was like letting go or putting out, that is a little bit like dying, so the audience is just there watching you die. [laughs]
BN: You do have to let go of control.
KG: When I go to a performance, I kind of want to see something unexpected where I don't know what's going to happen. Even if it's a band playing songs from their record. Even if there's something that's not smooth about it. That kind of lets you in. Some bands are so boring, it's like why do they bother playing music?
You guys have both seen a ton of shows. Are there any that stand out?
BN: I think any small show where people come out and play their asses off is really good to see. We lived in Mass, and there's like a really small community there, and people really bring it.
KG: Yeah, there was this festival they made on the ice up in Turners Falls [called Noisecapades]. It was insane, the dead of winter, walking out on this river that was all ice in this huge old industrial hockey town. It was very Twin Peaks, actually.
Kim, I was struck reading your book that the question would always come up, "What does it feel like to be a girl in a band?" Right now that seems like such a crazy question when so many of the best rock bands are headed by women. Is this moment exciting?
KG: I don't know, I don't really pay attention to it. [laughs] There are a lot of women singers. Definitely more women in the experimental music world than there ever were, and that's been great. Because I always thought that was a genre that came out of male record collecting, so it was kind of interesting that women and girls were playing more abstract music. That's the biggest change I see, really, within all the genres.
BN: You don't need to deal with guitar shop dudes.
Bill, you worked in a movie theater for a while. Did that influence the music at all?
BN: Not working in the movie theater, but film for sure influenced how I approach music.
What kinds of films?
BN: I think a lot of film music is really bad, actually. So I think you kind of learn what not to do. A lot of film music tries to really address something on the nose, and it kinda sucks. Not to keep coming back to [David] Lynch, but I definitely like the way he uses sound. It's more about juxtapositions. So he could film a patch of carpet and it's scary because of the way he films it, the way he uses music.
Well I wanted to talk about juxtapositions. In your shows have film behind you. And in the performance I watched, Kim, you were wearing very short, kind of glittery shorts that were almost the type of thing that Britney Spears might've worn in the early 2000s —
KG: Well hers would've been shorter and tighter.
BN: Britney got it from Kim.
KG: I always liked contrast. Like wearing a dress on stage and playing dissonant music. I always think that’s funny. And it's a little bit rock and roll I guess, and I like to bring that to Body/Head.
I know that in some ways Body/Head was inspired by Catherine Breillat's films. Recently she has said some things that have been a little bit controversial about #MeToo and Asia Argento.
KG: What did she say?
BN: But she's Catherine Breillat. Of course she did. And that's why people like her, too.
But I wanted to ask whether that changes how you use her work at all.
BN: I mean, [Catherine Breillat] was just something that people grabbed onto. It was just a mutual starting point for something we were both into, that we watched together, talked about. But it's not like any kind of structure or touchstone.
But more generally, there's a tendency right now when someone says something that people don't like to “cancel” them.
BN: Well that just happened with Lynch.
KG: What did he say?
BN: He said [Trump] might go down as the best president ever. But it was totally taken out of context. And it's Lynch. Lynch isn't going to talk about things in—he's not a politician. He's just saying [Trump]'s really disrupting politics. And then everyone jumps on it.
Well, take or leave the comments, the tendency of the culture —
KG: It's very reactionary. Anything with a hashtag is a reaction.
BN: It's too much, man. There's just too much info. And it’s all really emotional things for people.
Does it seem like an enemy of making good art?
BN: Yeah, in a way. You don't want to say that, but yeah. But I also think it's a really good thing. I think the good with it outweighs the bad. I also think that's something that mostly men really take refuge in.
KG: The thing is people aren't looking towards art to answer any questions anymore. Paul Schrader said that. Because there is no center of the culture anymore. Like in the '70s, people had questions about feminism, war, you had [Paul Mazursky’s] An Unmarried Woman, [Hal Ashby’s] Coming Home.
Well it seems like you guys are playing to that idea. There's going to be a small, but fervent community that's going to really love Body/Head music and it's not going to be for everybody.
BN: I mean, I think having a context is actually kind of hard to get. I don't want to be beholden to that, but I do feel a part of something, which is great.
How?
BN: It's not aesthetic. But it's like people that I'm friends with, people who play music, people who are working at this level. People who go out and play on the ice no matter what.