Psychedelic and Unbothered: Kim Gordon Brings ‘Play Me’ to Life at the Metro

Jun 25

By Colette Custin Bevard

There's a particular kind of quiet that falls over a room when Kim Gordon walks onstage- she simply is it. At Metro Chicago on Tuesday night, the Sonic Youth co-founder and certified godmother of art-damaged rock proved, once again, that economy of movement and of words can carry as much weight as any guitar solo.

Touring behind Play Me, her loose, glitchy, oddly funky third solo record, Gordon built a set that leaned hard into the new material. Eleven of the night's eighteen songs came straight from the album, while still finding room for deep cuts from The Collective and No Home Record. The result felt less like a victory-lap nostalgia show and more like an artist actively, almost restlessly, still figuring out what she wants to sound like. Which, for someone with a four-decade résumé, is its own kind of statement.

Visually, the night belonged as much to the screen behind her as to the band. Saturated, churning psychedelic textures pulsed and bled into each other for nearly the entire set. Just color washing over the stage like it was trying to keep pace with the music's energy. It gave the whole show a submerged, slightly hallucinatory quality, which suited songs like "Black Out" and "Dirty Tech" perfectly; Gordon's deadpan delivery against all that chromatic noise created a tension that never quite resolved, in the best way.

As for stage banter, there wasn't much. Gordon has never been a chatty performer, and Tuesday was no exception. The full extent of her between-song commentary amounted to one line, delivered in that flat, unhurried drawl: "It's nice to be back at the Metro." A long pause followed — long enough that you could feel the room lean in, unsure if that was it — before she added, almost as an afterthought, "...and Chicago." It got laughs from the crowd, but it also felt completely earnest. She doesn't need to fill space. The silence is part of the performance.

The back half of the set dug into older territory with "I'm a Man," "Trophies," and "It's Dark Inside" from The Collective, before the crowd-pleasing one-two of "Paprika Pony" and "Cookie Butter" off No Home Record sent the room toward the end of the night. She closed with "Cigarette" as a lone encore, walking off with the same lack of ceremony she walked on with.

It wasn't a show built on big gestures. It was a show built on confidence- the kind only available to someone who arguably influenced the language half the bands at Metro on any given night are still speaking.

Gordon’s performance was opened by the Fiery Furnaces.