Listening to Kim Gordon's second solo album feels like flipping through a diary. However, “The Collective'' is more of a cut-and-paste piece than an intimate depiction of her innermost thoughts. Comprised of stream-of-consciousness musings, pop culture-studded pastiches, and loosely sketched social observations, the record sees Kim continue to infuse uncomfortable truths through eerie trip-hop sounds and dank industrial rhythms. I know that there is. As the artist, who has always worked more like conceptual performance pieces than music for mass consumption, creates a mundane but maximalist packing list on opener “BYE BYE,” I notice that my anxiety is increasing – “Fundamentals/Contact Solutions” […] Sleeping pills/sneakers/boots/eyelash curler/vibrator” – over a steady beat paralleled by fuzzy electronic sounds. A thorough dissection of the basics of what it takes for a contemporary artist to make an album, with a challenge to consumer culture at the forefront, “The Candy House'' has the feel of a soundtrack to a vintage arcade game, and is disjointed. It reminds me of a lo-fi atmosphere. When I woke up, I was in the bathroom at a party. My vision is blurry and I am disconnected from the source of the music.
Moments like “Tree House” are a little more guitar-heavy, with stretches of static reverb strumming Kim's elusive utterances, while “I'm A Man” features avant-garde rap interludes. It's ringing out and veering into trap-colored territory. Like the dull pain of a migraine that you can't shake. Further highlights include “It's Dark Inside,” a dense, noisy track driven by howling distortion and a clattering, claustrophobic track with a prickly techno beat bubbling beneath a veneer of Gordon's cracked vocals. It comes in the form of the frightening cut “The Believers.” Elsewhere, producer Justin Risen (Charli We can see that mental and ultra-modern self-tuning mantras are paving the way to rise. By the album's end, there's a distinct sense that the walls are closing in, thanks in part to the drone noise and scraped beat of closer “Dream Dollar.” This shows the distance Kim Gordon has built throughout the album and throughout her career. , and the gap between music and art seems smaller than ever.