With her first consistent post-Sonic Youth project, Kim Gordon certainly did not make a beeline toward pop and the big payday. Body/Head – her somewhat unsettling collaboration with guitarist Bob Nace – is, if anything, more abstract and less congenial than most anything Sonic Youth ever recorded. Body/Head performs and records as a drumless duo, foregrounding Nace’s noisy and non-idiomatic guitar and the gutsy, provocative vocal urgency that has always been Gordon’s calling card. The hidden charms – a fragment of shapely melody here, an irresistibly goofy guitar sound there – do make themselves known on occasion in Body/Head’s long-form compositions/improvisations; but mostly this is straight-up, serious New York guitar abuse in the Branca tradition, coupled with Gordon’s sonically occluded, viscerally propelled poetry. If you like it, you’re really gonna like it.
Body/Head performs at BSP’s back-room theater on Friday, July 20 at 7:30 p.m., a mere week after the release of their new Matador Records full-length The Switch. Another considerably more serene art duo opens: that of the popular Brooklyn guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski. Tickets to this 16+ show cost $20. Tickets are available locally (cash only) at Outdated and Rocket Number 9 in Kingston, Jack’s Rhythms in New Paltz, Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie, the Woodstock Music Shop and online at http://bspkingston.com. BSP is located at 232 Wall Street in Kingston. The entrance for back-room shows is via Crown Street.
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