Even on her third solo album Play Me, Kim Gordon once again convinces with ultra-heavy bass, crisp drums and jagged samples. »Post Empire« thrills with digital cowbells and hi-hat patterns of the kind one usually associates with the depths of Atlanta trap. But the music on Play Me goes beyond that: at one moment, industrial sounds in the vein of Death Grips are hurled at the listener; at another, kraut-inflected motorik rhythms in the style of Neu!, or distorted noise guitars that inevitably recall Sonic Youth. Play Me does not want to be one specific thing, nor does it set out to shock. It seems instead to work its way through Gordon’s own musical preferences. In combination with her delivery – reminiscent of Lou Reed, at once forceful and unruffled – it works brilliantly. For all its hardness, Kim Gordon remains the queen of cool.
In the lyrics, Gordon longs for loss of control, for blackout, for total system failure. What else is left to us? She sings of AI, of ruthless tech bosses pouring their money into all the wrong things: »You wanna go to Mars … and then what?« It is one of the album’s most honest questions. So much energy is being misdirected. So much is being lost.
