KIM GORDON – GIRL IN A BAND (10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
DEY STREET BOOKS
BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN PORTER
It doesn’t feel like 10 years since Kim Gordon’s witty, acerbic Girl in a Band first made waves in the rock world, but such is the various dramas that seem to have sped up the passage of time since then, reading this again almost feels like returning to a forgotten world.
It’s a portrait of 80s and 90s New York that feels like a world long forgotten, yet Gordon’s writing style keeps you there, no matter where you may be reading from. Sonic Youth’s rise and eventual demise are studied in great detail, and that will thrill fans and connoisseurs of the grunge scene alike, but where the book genuinely shines is in those more personal moments. Unlike many memoirs that keep the reader at arm’s length, with this book, you are almost sitting next to Gordon on her journey, and you’re all the more drawn into it as a result.
More than just a pure story of her rise in a band, it also remains achingly personal, at once a eulogy to her band, her marriage, and even her belief in the city she called home, New York. It is uncompromisingly honest, with many, particularly Courtney Love and the left-unnamed architect of her marriage’s downfall, coming in for particular, well-written ire. This book seems therapeutic, although it never descends into howling at the moon, although Gordon’s catharsis is blunt, loud, and very, very real. Instead, what makes Gordon such a good writer is her willingness to self-examine and admit her own faults, not merely rip apart those who wronged her. It therefore avoids falling into the trap of being a mere score-settler, and as an absorbing read, shoots by very quickly.
Happily, the decade that’s passed since the original publishing of these thoughts brings a bonus chapter, which turns the book from the lamentation of a lost band and marriage into one that shows Gordon’s resurrection, in spite of a number of difficulties. She seems more at peace, more put together, and more sure of her spot in the world than 2015’s fallout left her, and so where one might have left 2015’s version of the book sad, or even angry, at what had transpired, 2025’s additions show a woman who’s still a badass (as unliterary as that word might be) and who has thrived in making fuel from the fiery embers of what she once knew. It remains a terrific read.
ISBN-13: 9780063450318
EBOOK: 9780062295910
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