Reviewed on Thursday January 22
“Is this part of the song?” It was a quiet, careful whisper from one concerned punter to another during the opening minutes of Body/Head’s performance. A tech ran back and forth as the seemingly immortal Kim Gordon hunched over her pedal board and strummed away at her guitar, cutting out at intermittent points. It was eventually revealed to be a technical issue, but the fact that people thought her guitar cutting out could have been part of the composition showed that this was a crowd that was up for anything Gordon and her counterpart, guitarist Bill Nace, threw its way.
The duo played electric guitars with no other accompaniment, getting through roughly six songs over the course of an hour. Once their technical issues were sorted out, they took their simple set-up and weaved it through terse, ridged compositions that drew you in, pushed you back out and then towered over you before disappearing entirely. It was nothing short of intense, sending many in the audience into a trance, meditatively rocking back and forth to whatever rhythm made itself known. It was as if Gordon and Nace would not stop until they had gotten every last bit of sound out of their guitars – at any given juncture, they could be found savagely chopping away at the strings, plunging them neck-first into the ground or even grinding them up against one another in a move of pure theatre, with Gordon lying down as Mace dominantly held his six-string over hers.
It’s interesting to think that Gordon, now in her early 60s, has just written a tell-all memoir about her life in and outside of music, reflecting on over 30 years of being a musician. With Body/Head, right there in front of our very eyes, she was writing a new chapter. Teething problems aside, it felt pretty remarkable to be a part of it.
