Kim Gordon: La Ghosts & Flowers

As KIM GORDON prepares to release No Home Record – her brilliant debut solo album – she takes stock of her consistently adventurous career so far. To discuss: her early days in New York’s Downtown, cooking with Neil Young and the perils of gentrification. “Life is unexpected,” she tells Tom Pinnock

I HAVE to show you this picture,” says Kim Gordon, reaching for her phone. “Sorry! You’ll probably regret bringing it up…”

Gordon finally finds the photo she’s looking for on Instagram – a shot of her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Syd Barrett, sitting nervously on a beanbag. “He’s 11,” she explains. “He’s got an enlarged heart, which means he coughs a lot. Now I understand why people have support dogs.”

Syd is back in Los Angeles, but his owner has flown to London, where she’s meeting Uncut in the ornate, low-ceilinged library of an 18th-century Clerkenwell hotel to discuss the first solo album of her storied career. A brave mix of abstract guitar, grimy electronics and Gordon’s impressionistic vocals, No Home Record playfully combines her long-standing interests in radical sound and art. While the music created by her former Sonic Youth cohorts in recent years has generally been reassuringly familiar, the nine songs on Gordon’s LP are stunningly modern in their approach.

“It’s funny, I can’t really figure out where I fit into the contemporary landscape of music,” says Gordon, sitting with excellent posture on the edge of a small grey settee. She’s looking her usual stylish but slightly formal self, in a black leather jacket, light-coloured top and grey check trousers, with chunky silver sandals showing off pastel-yellow nail varnish. “I never professed to be a musician. I got into it being inspired by No Wave bands, so it’s the only kind of record I could make. My friend, the poet Elaine Kahn, wrote my bio, and she said my music isn’t something you listen to, as much as experience.”