Body/Head
The Switch
Release Date: Jul 13, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Matador
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Album Review: The Switch by Body/Head
Great, Based on 7 Critics
Based on rating 8.0/10
It feels odd to talk about control when discussing Body/Head. Kim Gordon and Bill Nace's grinding guitar duets seem primed for letting go, with both members surrendering their musical egos to the flow of their noises and textures. They get out of their own way, carving out ample time for each piece to gestate, grow, and ripen. Dig deeper into their songs, though, and the discipline in Gordon and Nace's approach emerges.
Based on rating 8/10
To record The Switch, Body/Head returned to Massachusetts' Sonelab Studios and reunited with producer Justin Pizzoferrato, the collaborator on their debut, Coming Apart. However, the evolution of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace's music since then is unmistakable. On their second album, they blend guitar, voice, and moods into a seamless union while honoring the dualities hinted at in Body/Head's name.
Based on rating 8/10
The Body/Head dichotomy is a clear distinction from the Cartesian body/mind split — the mind, a separate, abstracted consciousness, versus the physicality of the head, of the same plane as the body. The Switch leans heavily into the visceral, cerebral cues returned to a warm pulse of blood. The Switch, in its entirety, is full of beautiful resonances. Minimal drones create slow, earthy movements — with more movement than Earth, a confrontation with the senses. "You Don't Need" finds your extremities, climbs up your limbs and wanders ….
Based on rating 7/10
Body/Head began life as an improvisational live project, but soon ventured into recorded territory, eventually releasing their debut LP, Coming Apart, in 2013. Post-Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon remains as inquisitive an artist as ever, and in experimental guitarist Bill Nace, she has found an atypical curiosity to match her own. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Switch feels like its roots still lie in spontaneity and a lack of premeditation.
Based on rating 7/10
"Experimental rock" has never been a particularly useful descriptor, as it can reasonably describe any band that veers even slightly away from conventionality. Put some horns in the bridge on one song? Alternative tuning on another one? You're avant-garde without doing much of anything. If any band really deserved the label, it was Sonic Youth. Their songs felt less like songs and more like puzzle boxes that were designed to frustrate the creator and the consumer equally.
Based on rating 3.5/5
Not just with bludgeoning or bellowing, but with a patient sort of fussing at loose threads. Some entanglements are ripped, some extracted with care, but there is never resolution, because disentangling is putting a seal on something you wish to excavate. Such is the way of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace with their output as Body/Head. It is minimal, studious mucking that resists the easy out of pop confection or groove.
Opinion: Excellent
If Body/Head's Coming Apart reduced avant-rock to a volatile, spewing magma, then The Switch is freer still, both wraith-like and earthbound. They're a collaboration between two musical juggernauts, Kim Gordon and Bill Nace. Gordon is one of those vital, widely known figures that sheds light on the peculiar growths that emerge outside of public gaze.
'The Switch'
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