She blends traditional folk with experimental elements and psychedelic inflections so deftly that it is impossible to imagine it to be the product of anything other than years of dedicatedly honing her craft; the ten songs on Hard Hearted Woman might be the most potently distilled version of it yet.
With the release of PLAY ME, Kim Gordon has mastered a modern mixture of distorted guitar and intense trip-hop beats. Gordon’s lyricism throughout the album is more politically confrontational than her past two solo records.
There is a certain messiness that he has managed to pull together throughout the record, giving an overall impression of authenticity, as well as multiple formidable creative sources colliding.
This aching vulnerability is seared across the album, building upon the elegant orchestration of her previous LP to create a rich, sultry infusion of vintage pop and noisy indie-rock, easily matching her best songwriting to date.
Amid dense waves of sludgy guitar the classically trained singer manages to make herself heard, hinting at the resilience required to endure in a world that demands too much. Then the album exhales, shifting from confrontation to contemplation. What follows is a gentler, but no less affecting suite of slowcore ballads.
cannibal world’s breakbeats, a not unfamiliar sound for Nothing, brings them into the lineage of the bands – TAGABOW, forever ☆ – doing this well (better, even) now. However, the record cocoons into the kind of soft strummed ballads that a young Neil Halstead would write about pain and heartbreak in a Welsh cottage.
Like much of Callahan’s finest work, this is an incredibly contemplative yet focused collection of songs from one of the most talented raconteurs of his generation.
