In the early 90s, Sonic Youth had become a major label success story. Whilst they made the transformation from DIY experimentalists to grown-up commercially-viable rock band without losing any of their twisted edge, some of their on-the-hoof risk-taking had been stymied by their plush new circumstances.
It’s perhaps with that in mind that Kim Gordon started up a new side-hustle in 1992, enlisting Pussy Galore’s Julia Cafritz and Boredoms’ Yoshimi P-We at the outset as co-conspirators. Pavement’s Mark Ibold would later join on bass, but before he did the band recorded a sizzling cover of X-Ray Spex’s classic debut single Oh Bondage Up Yours!
The result was put out as a now-very-rare single in 1993, released on a picture disc that featured Yoshimi dressed up in a friend’s dominatrix get-up. It also appeared on their 1994 compilation Unboxed, neither of which appear on any streaming platforms.
Perhaps that only adds to its lofty status – it remains a thrilling document of a band getting in a room together and capturing the moment. That drummer Yoshimi hadn’t heard the song before, but was played it by her bandmates and told to learn her parts as they were recording it, only adds to the sense of urgency. “All three of us sang on the song,” Yoshimi recalled in the Gordon co-edited book This Woman’s Work, “and they told me, ‘Yoshimi, you gotta scream’, so I screamed as loud as I could”.
For Gordon, putting down her version of this feminist call-to-arms meant more than recording a song she loved – this was about paying homage to a trailblazer in X-Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene, whose vocals on the original version of Oh Bondage, Up Yours! Gordon described as “the most exhilarating voice I have ever heard – it was all body”.
Free Kitten would go on to make three more records of tightly-wound, lo-fi punk, the most recent coming in 2008, but this cover remains their thrilling blueprint.
