Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

Sonic Youth may not be as well known as U2, but, like that much-better-known band, they started releasing music in the early eighties and went through major changes in their sound all the way up to their break up in 2011. Kim Gordon was Sonic Youth’ bass player and, along with guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, was one of the band’s founding members. (They went through a number of drummers before settling on Steve Shelley.)

Girl in a Band is about Sonic Youth’s history, the band’s eventual break up, and Gordon’s marriage to and eventual divorce from band mate Thurston Moore. As someone who has been a fan of Sonic Youth since the late eighties, I enjoyed Gordon’s succinct history of the band and dissection of a number of their songs. But what surprised me about Girl in a Band was everything else that was in the book. Gordon writes quite a bit about Keller, her older brother. She felt Keller was especially cruel to her when they were little, but she eventually realized he suffered from schizophrenia—even before her parents picked up on the fact that Keller was troubled. Not surprisingly, she also explores what it was like to be a girl in a band in both the more experimental New York music of the early eighties and then in the nineties male-dominated grunge scene. If anything, Gordon comes off as rather humble about her achievements and emphasizes several times that she often thinks of herself more as an artist than a musician. Girl in a Band is definitely a must read for fans of Sonic Youth but might also appeal to those with a more general interest in music and modern art.

John