Girl in a Band

Outstanding. Kim Gordon shows us how its possible to keep her humanity and all this while changing the landscape of music for ever. She comes across as a hero of our times. Nuff said.

She is the one.

I've been a big Sonic Youth fan ever since the day I impulse-bought "Sister" in 1985 - suddenly there was some current guitar music I could connect with. So I was looking forward to reading this but have to say I found it a bit of a disappointment. It's not a bad book by any means, but I do find the writing rather flat and humourless, with none of the edge one associates with Sonic Youth.In fact it's over 100 pages til you even get to the group, but by the time I'd finished the book, those early chapters seemed like some of the more engaging parts of the book. Her perceptive but unsentimental account of her brother's mental health issues is some of the best writing I've read on the subject.Once she gets to New York, it all follows a fairly predictable pattern. There are plenty of interesting names mentioned, like Jean Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol, Kurt Cobain - they're all duly ticked off without really saying anything much about them. We do find out that she doesn't think much of Billy Corgan (pretentious) or Courtney Love {"mad, bad and dangerous to know" as Byron put it). There's very little feeling of what it was like to be in Sonic Youth - you'd hardly know that there are 2 other people in the group apart from her and Thurston Moore (frequently put down ex), so few mentions are there of Lee Ranaldo or Steve Shelley. There's a fairly set pattern of recording the album/going on tour/recording next album and so on. There's certainly never any sense of the extraordinary power of Sonic Youth playing live on a good night.Sadly it doesn't look like we'll see or hear Sonic Youth in action again after her split with Thurston Moore. There's a great story to be told some day about the group and their music, but this isn't quite it.

This is a thourghly nasty memoir that appears to be an attempt to hit back at people Kim doesn't like. Fans of Sonic Youth will learn little about the band. Instead we get a gossipy tack fest, half-baked and skimpy.After a promising start it soon descends into hearsay and quite astonishing attacks on people like Madonna for being too fat at the start of her career. On reading her letter to Karen Carpenter I started to wonder if this was a mock autobiography in the same genre as Spinal Tap!Cosi Fanny Tutti's and Viv Albertine's books are the real deal if you want to know what it's really like to be a woman dealing with life and the music/art business.

It's very readable but an in-depth look at SY's albums and songwriting processes it isn't. Covers her early life in some detail and her meeting Thurston and the formation of SY and then brief chapters on their work, and the people they met - notably Kurt Cobain.Touches on her marriage breakdown but not in too much detail thankfully.What comes across is her love of art is as great as her love of performing, possibly greater.Would have been nice to see examples of her art to put that into context.

A good read. I've got into music biography in lockdown and I really enjoyed Kims story. I'm not even a Sonic Youth fan, their music never appealed to me but its worth reading if you are into 90's alt rock. The 3 stars is because Kim comes across like a hypocrite: she claims to be a feminist but makes so many judgemental and catty remarks about other women ("I didn't know the Roxy in LA was frequented by so many hookers in high heels") and is clearly bitter about Thurston's affair which I can understand but she is really nasty about the other woman and comes across quite bad. I think she made an error with this memoir.

I read a review about this book and decided to give it ago. I have a couple of Sonic Youth albums that I play sporadically but would not call myself a super fan. Autobiographies are hit and miss for me, but I really enjoyed this one. It's well written , she has an interesting take on the world and a good story to tell. Well recommended.