Kim Gordon - Play Me

Kim Gordon’s third solo album arrives with a clear brief - keep it short, keep it moving. 'Play Me' doubles down on her partnership with producer Justin Raisen, sharpening an approach they established on 'The Collective' with songs that rarely hang around long enough to explain themselves.

What’s striking is how current it sounds without opening Gordon to any accusations of trend-chasing. The through-line still feels identifiably hers. Confrontational and dryly funny, it's a balance that lands well on some of the early offerings. ‘Not Today’ opens up a more melodic vocal lane than much of her recent work, while ‘Dirty Tech’ turns AI anxiety into a jittery chant that sounds both playful and ominous.

Lyrically, 'Play Me' keeps returning to themes of power and hellscape-fueled-curation. From tech billionaires to disappearing agency and algorithmic convenience masquerading as choice. Gordon has been explicit in interviews that “the news” shaped this material, and you can hear it. Even so, this is not a hectoring op-ed. The writing tends to work in flashes and fragments, letting absurdity do some of the political heavy lifting. It’s more suggestive than didactic, more street-level than slogan.

The short-form structure is part of the point here: these tracks hit, mutate and vanish, creating momentum rather than monumentality. At its best, 'Play Me' feels like a series of sharp transmissions from inside a culture that’s speeding up and hollowing out at the same time.

There’s also a lot of life in it. For a record so preoccupied with tech dread and social corrosion, it carries a surprising amount of movement and mischief. Gordon has described it as intense but not simply angry, with humour and joy threaded through the noise. Abrasive, yes, but never inert. 'Play me' doesn’t try to comfort. It tries to provoke, energise and outlast the scroll.