Sonic Youth turns sour: a tarnished marriage band

For 30 years Kim Gordon was one half of a cool couple in a cool band. With her husband Thurston Moore she formed Sonic Youth, who sprang partly from the New York art world and partly from the post-punk No Wave music scene. Idealised and romanticised by their fans, they seemed to represent a radical version of domestic bliss, more Rebel Marrieds than Smug Marrieds. When both marriage and band ended in 2012, fans were distraught, and many will surely come to this memoir hoping to find out exactly what happened to their dream.

They won’t be disappointed. Detailing her Californian childhood, subsequent move to New York and ensuing musical career, Gordon tells the story of the band through the detail of specific songs, and is outspoken about the continual irritations and frustrations of being a woman in the music business. There are fascinating cameos of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, of Kathleen Hanna and the Riot Grrl movement, and visits to the UK, where Sonic Youth were at first better received than in the US, giving rise to her eyebrow-raising comment that ‘bands are treated better over there, which I chalk up to the socialist governments’.