It’s not every night that a living legend strolls through Boston, so we made sure we were all hands on deck Sunday the 13th when Kim Gordon played at the Paradise. Gordon, who has spent decades cutting her teeth in groups like Free Kitten, Body/Head, and a little indie band called Sonic Youth, is touring behind her third proper solo album, Play Me. Her set proved to be just as cacophonous as one would expect.
Up first on the night was New York rock group voyeur. The group has a relatively standard indie-rock flair, and for a few songs they came off as a perfectly passable but slightly incongruous opener. But as their set went on, voyeur’s New York influence became increasingly obvious. The riffs started to sound like those of Sonic Youth’s heyday, and the song structures started to mimic The Velvet Underground. The band’s Bandcamp image is simply an image of Lou Reed instead, and his influence was obvious. The band charged through a varying set touching on familiar indie-rock and more experimental art rock. Touring behind their 2025 album, The Burden Of Desire, they made a solid impression on the fans that got there early.
Kim Gordon was out next, and it was apparent immediately that no one has told her that she’s 73 years of age. Dressed in a short, reflective sequined dress, she immediately jumped into the title track off her new album. In fact, Gordon and her band played all of Play Me in order, save for the closing “BYE BYE ’25.” The band followed with three songs from Gordon’s second album The Collective, and two from her debut, No Home Record. An encore consisted of one lengthy, atmospheric and loud jam called “Cigarette,” a live staple that remains as-yet unreleased.
No Home Record is an album not too far out of league with the pioneering noise rock of Sonic Youth, but her two follow-up albums are more trap-based, which automatically made for an intriguing setlist no matter the order of the tunes. Some of the newer songs like “Black Out” and “Dirty Tech” were played straight as they are on the album, while others like “Not Today” were played in more of a standard alternative style. For the first six songs, Gordon solely handled vocals, but she donned a guitar for “Busy Bee” and played it sporadically afterwards. As the set came into the No Home Record portion, she began to up the noise jams. Her 2024 hit “BYE BYE” was always going to be one of the highlights of the night, and was probably the one that got the crowd the most energized. The song features a heavy trap-industrial beat that was played straight as it is on the record, and ends with a multi-minute guitar noise fest, and her 2019 song “Cookie Butter” ended the proper set with the same intensity. Performed as a prolonged noise jam, the track saw Gordon’s guitarist using what appeared to be a screwdriver on her guitar while the rhythm section repeated a hypnotic beat.
Gordon’s solo music has become markedly different from anything else she’s done in her career, so this gig at the Paradise was far from the most intense Boston show she’s ever done. But intensity was traded in for eclecticism, as she and her band jumped between trap, alternative, and noise rock on a whim. Plus the lengthy guitar freakouts still made appearances, all set against a hypnotically vibrant background video. Kim Gordon proved that her present is just as ambitious as her past – and that there’s still a lot of future for her, too.
Check out the rest of Greg’s photos below.
