Photo credit: Natalia Mantini

Kim Gordon’s No Home Record is a tough, sexy album and it sounds exactly like what you’d expect from her solo debut, after three decades spent in her former band, Sonic Youth.

Often dissonant, occasionally menacing, and never boring, Gordon’s new album provides squalls of guitar along with her icy cool vocals. She works up a drum machine on a pair of tunes and bass on another. The minimalist, jagged soundscape leaves plenty of space and creates different moods, mostly dark. Her impressionistic lyrics leave a lot of room for interpretation about the nature of art, capitalism, and consumerism.

No Home Record and Gordon’s visual art were two subjects that came up in a quick phone chat I had with her just after the album’s release.

Hear the chat here.

Record Store Day…What an excellent idea!  It’s not only really just become a thing.  It’s really just become a great thing!  Record Store Day 2015 is this Saturday, April 18.  As a guy who worked at Second Coming Records (the one between Harvard Square & Central Square in Cambridge, MA as opposed to the one in the West Village; both are closed) as well as the also now defunct Rainbow Books and Records in Honolulu… I can testify that some of life’s best conversations and encounters – not to mention acquisitions – happen at independent retailers of wax.  I had a very enjoyable chat with one of the guys who invented Record Store Day, Michael Kurtz, who gives a sense of the history and takes a look at a few of the titles that’ll be unleashed.  A word from this year’s ambassador Dave Grohl too…