Kim Gordon has released a new track called “Murdered Out,” and, incidentally, it’s the first she’s released under her name in about 30 years, because of the whole, you know, Sonic Youth thing. And, oddly, that first track is about cars. Sort of. The term “murdered out,” as NPR — who shared the track — and Gordon herself describe, and as you may already know, refers to the lowrider trend of nullifying brand-oriented features of a car — covering the logo, blacking out the windows, the tires, etc.
The track is produced by Justin Raisen, who also recently produced Angel Olsen’s My Woman and has worked in the past with pop musicians like Sky Ferreira and Charli XCX, who actually initiated the collaboration — and Gordon tells NPR the song is “possibly the most accessible” thing she’s done.
She explains that the song’s lyrics were inspired by her move back to Los Angeles, and being immersed again — by virtue of simply living there — in car culture, where she’d been noticing that she was seeing more and more cars that’d been murdered out. She elaborates the symbolism in the interview, saying:
I don’t think this is celebrating something that’s a corporate symbol, it���s more like blacking it out. We’re getting rid of the logo, we’re getting rid of everything [that] is [considered] design and yet the whole black-on-black thing is becoming already incorporated into mainstream design culture. It’s almost like a peaceful resistance.
In a separate statement accompanying the release (shared on Pitchf0rk), she called murdering out a “statement-making rejection of the shiny brand new look, the idea of a new start, the promise of power, and the freedom on the open road. Like an option on a voting ballot, ‘none of the above.'”