By the time Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief was born in 1991, Kim Gordon had already released seven albums with Sonic Youth. It’s not that there were no women in bands in the 1980s but there were few enough that the concept of the ‘Women in Rock Special’ was very familiar to desperate music journalists. It was also still the case that, within bands, women were seldom granted centre stage – unless they looked extraordinary or ran the band.

That meant Gordon, and Kim Deal of Pixies, were more celebrated than any male bassist of a 1980s indie band. (Keith Gregory of the Wedding Present, for example, was never considered brain-meltingly cool simply for existing.) No such fate awaits Lenker – or any other young women indie artists such as Mitski, Waxahatchee or the trio who make up Boygenius.

Being a woman in rock today is unexceptional. There are now plenty of opportunities for women to make music, write about music, work in record companies, etc.

DEI has little to do with it. Big Thief are extraordinary, a band who, if they were more interested in performance and had a touch more charisma, could be this generation’s R.E.M. Tapping into the place where backwoods Americana and college-town bohemia intersect in hypnotic ways, there’s a woodiness to their sound, like the cracked patina on a piece of old furniture.

If they had a touch more charisma Big Thief could be this generation’s R.E.M.

They’re also a reviewer’s nightmare, in that they change their set from night to night and always play a bunch of new songs. While familiar tracks such as ‘Vampire Empire’ or ‘Incomprehensible’ might get the biggest cheers, the new ones were reliably terrific, and it was intriguing to see Lenker throwing herself into sounding like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. If Big Thief are best known as a folkish group, here she was wrenching out feedback-laden solos, albeit while the rest of the group responded with suppleness and care.

Earlier in the day I had pulled up a random Spotify playlist of Big Thief songs, and kept thinking how much they reminded me of the spidery, baroque Americana guitar lines of an old band called Meat Puppets. At the Academy, there was not a hint of that: the set progressed steadily from foolishness to grunginess, before a more placid encore. Though I scarcely consider myself a fan, each time I see them I forget how much they delight me.

There were a lot more blokes my age – coming for the Sonic Youth memories – at the Kim Gordon gig. There were also a good proportion of young women giving it some fist-throwing welly for the godmother of grunge. I suspect both groups of fans would prefer Gordon revisit her past rather than dwell on her present – the cheers were definitely loudest when she strapped on a guitar.

Kim Gordon’s lyrics read like the English GCSE coursework of a pretentious teenager

Gordon’s solo stuff – trip hop topped up with squalls of noise – doesn’t sound much like Sonic Youth. But it worked a lot better live than on record: in the comfort of your living room it’s all a bit unremittingly mid-paced and bleak, and Gordon’s voice – a kind of aggressively ennui-laden purry hiss – doesn’t vary a lot. At the Empire, with guitar, bass, drums and bits of keyboard behind her, it was more aggressive and purposeful. Not entertaining, per se, but interesting.

Interesting, at least, until one got to Gordon’s lyrics. She is now 73, and her lyrics read like the English GCSE coursework of a pretentious teenager. Dip into any song from the setlist and you will find something asinine. Here’s the entire first verse of ‘Bye Bye 25’: ‘Mental health/ Electric vehicle/ Gulf of Mexico/ Energy conversion/ Gay/ Bird flu/ Advocate/ Pregnant person/ Immigrants/ Intersex/ Victim/ Male-dominated/ Care.’ Makes you think.