“The city can really energise you”: Kim Gordon on the song that encapsulates New York
There is something so unequivocally cool about Kim Gordon. Her career as a musician and artist has spanned decades, during which she has continued to retain a certain spark that separates her from her contemporaries. It’s a quest for constant innovation that keeps Gordon going, as demonstrated by her recent solo output, which seamlessly merges trap beats with noise rock.
Gordon helped shape Sonic Youth into one of alternative rock’s most influential bands with her unbothered vocals and socially conscious lyricism. The musician was born in New York, although she relocated to Los Angeles as a child. Still, it wouldn’t be long before she was drawn to New York again, returning to the beloved city in her late 20s.
It was 1980, and the no-wave movement was truly ripping up New York’s underground. Bands were rebelling against typical forms and structures of popular music, using unconventional sounds and instrumental approaches to create a new anti-genre. Gordon was intrigued, although she was set on becoming a visual artist, not a musician.
Yet, when you find yourself in a city as expansive and full of opportunity as New York, it’s only natural that your priorities and interests begin to shift and warp. Before long, Gordon found herself in a band which eventually became Sonic Youth. The project allowed Gordon to have complete artistic freedom, and she screeched and screamed over dissonant basslines as Sonic Youth became one of the underground’s most talked-about new acts.
Gordon has been associated with New York ever since, representing everything cool about the city’s vast music scene. However, there’s one song that she believes totally encapsulates the city’s energy – ‘Roosevelt Island’ by Eleanor Friedberger. The song appears on the musician’s 2011 album Last Summer, which Gordon is a huge fan of, particularly the “great seventies radio sound.”
She called the song one of her favourite break-up tracks, believing that it is a more hopeful cut about anticipating good things and appreciating time alone in the city. “She can make something really mundane sound really meaningful,” Gordon explained to Rolling Stone. “She sings about riding the train, and there’s a line, ‘And it goes and it goes.’ And I think that song is kind of like, ‘See you on the other side of a breakup.’”
The song, with its upbeat rhythm, sees Friedberger recollect memories, such as jumping on the subway, going to bars and taking photos. Gordon feels like it reflects that feeling you get after a break-up perfectly, with the vastness of New York almost acting as a metaphor for the sea of new chances and experiences now on offer.
She explained how Friedberger “talks about riding a train, and you really get a sense of living in New York and being alone. It’s a window into feeling, in a way, optimistic and excited. It’s about how the city can really energise you, even though going to Roosevelt Island is kind of escaping the city.”
The need for escape has always been a regular choice of expression for New Yorkers. There’s something intrinsic about desperately wishing to break free from the concrete jungle that feels so attached to the vines of main streets and bushes of urban living.
Listen to the song below.
