Album Review: Kim Gordon - "PLAY ME"

On Play Me, Kim Gordon's third solo album and collaboration with Justin Raisen, Gordon's bold direction with hip hop beats, sample heavy instrumentation and industrial noise is pushed even further and has become even more solidified.

Matador - 2026

Kim Gordon is one of the most celebrated and notable guitar shredders, poets, and fashion icons to come out of the 1980's and 1990's with her major contributions to Sonic Youth. Since Sonic Youth's disbandment in 2011, Gordon has been busy with fashion, contemporary art, writing, and of course, music. Gordon's been involved in the Body/Head project with Bill Nace and has been releasing solo material with producer and multi-instrumentalist Justin Raisen. 2019's No Home Record pushed her sound with industrial noise, looping and hip hop beats, and 2023's The Collective emphasized this experimentation even further. Now with Play Me, her third solo album and collaboration with Raisen, Gordon's bold direction with hip hop beats, sample heavy instrumentation and industrial noise is pushed even further and has become even more solidified. Her albums have become more and more entrenched into hip hop, where you can now clearly categorize Play Me as a hip hop record for the most part. By using her raspy, graveled voice for narrating, rapping, and sometimes singing over these instrumentals, Gordon is certainly doing something that nearly all icons pushing their seventies wouldn't dare to even try.

Take the album's opening title track, where Gordon raps over the track's horn laced, trip hop influenced sampling. It's hypnotic, infectious, and is the album's best track. The only unfortunate thing about "Play Me" is its length; it's barely two and a half minutes in change, but it's dying to be instantly repeated. You could even say this about the entire album in its thirty minutes of total runtime. "Girl With a Look" has a swirling, hazy driving instrumental that dances into a frenzy, playfully batting "girl with a look" back and forth with "boy with a hook." Play Me has some of the most straightforward hip hop tracks she's done, from the chaotically blistering "No Hands" to her spitting delivery on the trap inflected "Black Out."

"Dirty Tech," which has one of the most delicious hip hop instrumentals on the record, has Gordon sounding off on all things big tech and she is likewise on "Subcon," where she continuously questions tech monopolies' potentially disastrous decisions on the environment ("but you wanna go to Mars / and then what?"). "Busy Bee" is a reunion of sorts, where Dave Grohl (yes, that Dave Grohl) plays drums on the track while it samples a sped up conversation from MTV Beach House between Gordon and Julia Cafritz. I say this as Grohl and Gordon have had plenty of history hanging out and performing together within the 90's alternative / underground rock music scene, while Cafritz and Gordon have performed together in bands like Free Kitten. "ByeBye25!" is an updated version of 2024's "Bye Bye" with updated poetry slammed keywords that have been flagged by the Trump administration ("bird flu, immigrants, electric vehicle, they/them, etc.).

Play Me sounds like a levelled up version of both No Home Record and The Collective, where the elements of hip hop, industrial noise, and Gordon's performances are cranked to eleven and the songs feel more fleshed out in the process. It has a great flow, more bombast, and more energy. Sure, it's only thirty minutes, but with a record this loud, abrasive, and punchy, thirty minutes is fine with me. Her lyrical focus on topics like the current disarray of U.S. politics and big tech sound great on these instrumentals that make you want to crank them as loud as your ears can bare. Yes, Gordon's music and direction isn't for everyone nor does it sound good on paper to some (seventy two-year-old Sonic Youth frontwoman rapping over hip hop beats?) but to those who are enthralled by it, Play Me is one of the year's best albums with Kim Gordon only getting better and more unpredictable.

My Rating: 8 / 10

Favorite Songs: "Play Me," "Not Today," "Dirty Tech," "Busy Bee," "Subcon," "Girl With a Look"