In 1990 Kim Gordon had a huge alt-rock hit: Kool Thing. At 70, she continues the tradition.

At 70, the onetime Sonic Youth musician is releasing a blistering new solo LP, finding new fans on TikTok and making art that continues to surprise.

The day she turned 60, the artist and musician Kim Gordon felt, by her own admission, “shipwrecked.” She had recently gone through a painfully high-profile divorce from her husband of 27 years, Thurston Moore, and in the wake of their split, their band Sonic Youth — the freewheeling and fearlessly experimental group that almost single-handedly defined the sound and ethos of American alternative rock — ended its 30-year-run.

Gordon’s 70th birthday party last year, though, was another story entirely. It doubled as a celebration of finishing her second solo album, “The Collective.”

Not many artists welcome their 70s with a new album, and virtually none with a record as blistering and gloriously strange as “The Collective”. But left turns are business as usual for Gordon, a restlessly curious artistic polymath who has never settled for the conventional, expected or familiar.

Justin Raisen, the 41-year-old L.A.-based producer who worked with Gordon on “The Collective,” noted that “Lots of careers go downhill with age, but there are also lots that go upward.” He cited as examples David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave — and Kim Gordon.

“What Kim’s doing is totally, absolutely normal. What’s not normal is when women or people who are marginalized in other ways have stopped making art” for reasons having to do with ageism or sexism, Hanna, of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, said. “We’re not witnessing a miracle, we’re witnessing what happens when the thing that’s supposed to happen is just allowed to happen.”