What could be more iconic than 71-year-old alt-rock-veteran Kim Gordon singing the deliciously explicit lyrics to “It’s Dark Inside” in front of an adoring Minneapolis audience? On Friday night, the co-founder of Sonic Youth presented a new, boundary-pushing sound of her own — not reliving past victories or accolades — to Fine Line’s sold-out room.

And yet, Gordon doesn’t like being referred to as an icon. “The word ‘icon’ just brings to mind something that’s completed and frozen in a certain way,” she tells CBC. Gordon, on the other hand, is still on fire. Her musical career has spanned more than four decades, much of which she spent as the singer/songwriter/bassist of avant-garde rock band Sonic Youth. In her post-SY work, notably on 2019’s No Home Record, she continues a focus on unconventional, distorted, and disintegrated sounds — while always finding new forms. 

On “Cookie Butter,” Gordon used her guitar’s whammy bar and a floor pedal board to create a hypnotizing bed of noise, which was accentuated by percussionist Madi Vogt’s shaker. Gordon slowly muttered, “I saw / I’ve known / I remember / I liked / I met / I awaken / I wish / I have / I suck / I approach / I f***ed…” in a detached, yet intense fashion.

Standing in front of Gordon is intimidating, and she knows it. “Onstage, people have told me, I’m opaque or mysterious or enigmatic or even cold,” she writes in her 2015 memoir, Girl in a Band. “But more than any of those things, I’m extremely shy and sensitive, as if I can feel all the emotions swirling around the room.” Amid the layered synthesizers and gritty snare drums of “Shelf Warmer,” Gordon paused eerily between monotone lines with a cold, stern look in her eyes. It felt like a moment to sink to your knees in submission.

The dark trap hip-hop beats and industrial noise on her most recent album, The Collective, rose from collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor) and translated well live. Vogt’s extensive percussion setup and Camilla Charlesworth’s potent bass produced a viscerally rattling sound. (Usual guitarist Sarah Register was not present).

Lyrically, Gordon teeters on the line between sexual and sensual, occasionally slipping into each. The latter was exemplified on “Paprika Pony” when she sang, “You take a bite / You take a bite / In a country dress / New avenue / You own me / You're roaming / And you don't see the tree” over a slow-temp, techno beat. She owned her own sexuality on “Air BnB,” singing, “It's a good life / I am delicious / Delicious / Air BnB.” 

To deliver these sultry words, Gordon frequently glanced at the music stand placed next to her microphone. She flipped a page after each song, seeming to rely on seeing the lyrics in front of her — maybe out of necessity, or maybe out of comfort. Nevertheless, she resembled a pastor reading scripture for a congregation to follow along with. Her teachings included, “Jack it up, make it up / Pack it up, trade it up / Suck it up / F*** it up” on the chorus of “Don’t Miss My Mind”  — as if passing on scholarly wisdom, and concluding with the outro’s doctrine: “Don’t f*** it up / Don’t f*** it up.” 

Fine Line was an intimate space to host an artist of Gordon’s stature. To her, the stage is a place where emotions can be expressed and acted out comfortably. “The image a lot of people have of me as detached, impassive, or remote is a persona that comes from years of being teased for every feeling I ever expressed,” she writes in her memoir. “BYE BYE” projected the strongest sense of apathy with deadpan vocals detailing the mundane: “White tee, turtleneck, iBook, power cord, medications / Button down, laptop, hand cool, body lotion, Bella Freud, YSL, Eckhaus Latta…”

Returning to the stage for the encore to the crowd cheering, Gordon nonchalantly said, “Calm down. It’s just music.” She ended the night with the song she began with: “BYE BYE.”  If it’s just music — as in, nothing to be taken too seriously — why not exit with another round of trap beats and the words “Eyelash curler, vibrator, teaser, bye bye, bye bye?”

Gordon’s ‘80s New York art scene contemporary Jean-Michel Basquiat once said, “Art is how we decorate space. Music is how we decorate time.” Examining Friday night in the context of Basquiat’s words, Gordon and her band decorated 90 minutes with musical innovation and inspiration for women to unflinchingly exhibit their sexuality and power, at any age.  

Opening act Infinite River seemed to agree with Gordon’s “It’s just music” assertion. The Detroit-based space-prog quartet’s music was sometimes groovy, other times turbulent, and didn’t contain words — until the last song. Without a narrative, poetry, or catchy hooks to grip onto, listeners had to simply let the sound float through them. What sometimes began as warm, dreamy noise would gradually transform into unpredictable chords, then abruptly end. In leather gloves, Gretchen Davidson’s gentle guitar picking gave off wavelike reverberation to lead psychedelic jams with keyboardist Warren Defever, drummer Steve Nistor, and guitarist Joey Mazzola.

Kim Gordon

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Infinite River

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Setlist

BYE BYE

The Candy House

I Don’t Miss My Mind

I’m A Man

Trophies

It’s Dark Inside

Psychedelic Orgasm

Tree House

Shelf Warmer

The Believers

Dream Dollar 

Encore

Air BnB

Paprika Pony

Cookie Butter

Hungry Baby

Grass Jeans

BYE BYE