sleater kinney

Sleater-Kinney: The Woods

Sleater-Kinney: The Woods

It’s really too bad we’re all so jaded now. In the universe that is rock ‘n’ roll, almost every new release has at least one major reference point (or “trick”, as a large percentage of bands have proven). We’ve heard it all before. We’ve seen it done better. A band with early critical acclaim can mathematically determine when the reversal of accolades will begin, regardless of the quality of the output (check in with the Arcade Fire in 2008). Others find tepid reviews but all the right moves garner them a second listen and MFA-worthy essays (see “Paul Banks sounds NOTHING like Ian Curtis You Philistine Swine”, circa one year after Interpol’s debut), only to have that backlash, too.

Now, try being the band from the early 1990s who are now on their seventh release and, get this, have never broken up (thus no revival acclaim). How do you get people to listen to you? No one knows, of course (Robert Pollard suggests complaining). But if you’re Sleater-Kinney, you learn some new tricks and give it everything you’ve got. We’re still jaded, but maybe The Woods could be a wake-up call. If we (the critics and the listeners) let it.

For three out of their last four records (including The Woods), Sleater-Kinney have maintained that they wanted to try something new. On The Hot Rock, they broke rank with John Goodmanson and worked with producer Roger Moutenot (famed for Yo La Tengo’s dreamy sound). One Beat featured horns and strings. Somehow, both those releases still sounded remarkably like Sleater-Kinney writing a new batch of quality songs. The “trying something new” part was probably what the band needed to get through the existential questions of rock band-ism, but fans still heard basically the same band they always loved.

The Woods, though, is indeed a departure. The women have added the sound of classic rock to their punk handbag. Classic rock, as in huge guitars, near-constant drumming, and frequent operatic vocals. As in Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix. Sleater-Kinney go straight for the zeitgeist on The Woods. Young punk rock converts quickly learn to cast off these masters. Older and mature punk fans eventually listen to the two styles side-by-side, appreciating the beauty and slow precision of a Pete Townshend solo as much as the amateur energy and joy of the Slits. To have Sleater-Kinney converge upon these styles and create The Woods is a boon to the music world.

It all starts with feedback. Literally one second into the record and you are on the ride, and there’s no getting off it unless you jump. The guitars, as mentioned, are huge. Ferocious. Corin Tucker holds it down (no bass here) while Carrie Brownstein meanders all over the place. You can imagine her fingers bleeding from playing so hard. Janet Weiss has always been an exceptional drummer, but on The Woods she lifts off into the stratosphere. The real thrill, though, is how Sleater-Kinney takes all this unleashed fury (and that’s what it sounds like — fury. Even more so than on any other S-K release) and shapes great, f’n rocking songs out of it.

Dave Fridmann’s production on The Woods is another feather in his cap. He has helped make a record that sounds as if it would be very much at home on any AOR radio station in the 1970s. Listen to this one on headphones. Sounds pulse from one ear to the other. Guitars suddenly jump out of the mix, startling and thrilling the listener. The songs hold their own throughout. “The Fox” is as aggressive-sounding as the lyrics imply (“On the day the duck was born / The fox was watching all along”). “Wilderness”, in turn, conjures up the dense feeling of being lost in the middle of an esoteric nowhere. You look around and every direction looks exactly the same as the last.

Elsewhere, “Jumpers” is an agitated almost-paranoiac rant against making a wrong decision, and the moment when we step back from that decision to reclaim our life again. “Modern Girl” slows down to offer a pretty, sarcastic take on standards imposed. “Let’s Call It Love” even boasts a six-minute extended guitar jam. Unlike similar lengthy freak-outs by other guitar-based bands in the recent past, Sleater-Kinney does not attempt to bring the song back to its original melody to provide a sense of structure. It just lets it all play out, with absolutely no apologies. Now, isn’t that rock ‘n’ roll?

“Entertain” is the only minor mis-step. Musically, the song is ace. Lyrically, the call-to-arms over shallow bands doesn’t sound as urgent as perhaps Sleater-Kinney wanted it to. (Or maybe it’s my age. Personally, if my girlfriend finds Gang of Four more palatable because she liked the Futureheads and Bloc Party first, I really don’t care. There are better things to think about these days.) That’s a small, small complaint, however. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss are at the top of their abilities on The Woods, and after more than a decade together, that is a feat that should be noted and cheered.

It’s hard to subtly convey the absolute strength of this release. Sleater-Kinney have never really had a miss. It’s their seventh release and a lot of people have short attention spans. Even the best music listener can grow tired (even if it is only temporarily) of a sound or genre. Because of these factors, any determinedly positive writing comes across as hyperbole. Listen anyway, please. There is passionate intensity here. There is a commitment to the visceral, which is lacking in a lot of music today, even very good music. There is sadness, worry, anger, and hope in the lyrics. And there is the kind of record that makes you grateful that you are living in the time in which it is released.

The Woods, with all of its “life” metaphors, ends up sounding like that four-letter word: confusing, fucked-up, chilling, and sometimes shatteringly beautiful. It is a record of our time but also one that gleefully reaches back into the past to glorify, not to merely pillage notes and licks for empty consumption. This is ambitious rock ‘n’ roll for us who are here now. In a generation, we can gladly pass it along. The Woods, with all the enormity and secret treasures that the title implies, guarantees that we will.

Sleater-Kinney: One Beat

Sleater-Kinney: One Beat

I can’t remember where I actually saw it, but I could have sworn that one major-paper reviewer likened the sound of Sleater-Kinney’s newest release to that of the Go-Go’s, those early ’80s hitmakers whose punk edges were smoothed out to irrelevance by the time they foisted “We Got the Beat” and “Vacation” on a Reaganite public just looking to have some Cyndi Lauper-like fun. Which is cool if you think about it, because tremendous connectivity and continuity can bestow a significant amount of cultural capital on those looking for it — a clever way of saying that said reviewer may likely succeed in drumming up some additional cash for Sleater-Kinney from Go-Go’s fans looking to rid themselves of whatever disposable income they may have left in this debilitating recession.

And it is true, I did catch a video for Sleater-Kinney’s catchy pop nugget, “You’re No Rock N’ Roll Fun”, a year or so back while I was loitering in the girls’ department of a Los Angeles Macy’s waiting for my wife to grab some threads. After I picked my jaw up off of the floor — riot grrrls coming to a mall near you! — I smiled, happy that the Pacific Northwest punk trio’s excellent work had slipped past mainstream sensors looking to intercept anything remotely different from the Spears Nation music that is visited like a plague upon global teen girldom. What a mindfuck it is to see Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss jam through a soft-punk tune about music scene snobbery right after witnessing a nearly nude (and barely post-adolescent) Christina Aguilera warble songs of desire past her (very) glossy lips.

The Go-Go’s, Christina Aguilera, Sleater-Kinney. Like the Sesame Street (or was it Electric Company) skit used to rhetorically inquire: which one of these doesn’t belong?

These are the strange things you might think about when you sit down and sift through Sleater-Kinney’s One Beat, a snarling rumination on everything from global politics (“One Beat”), American arrogance (the cleverly titled “Combat Rock”) and possibly September 11th (“Far Away”) to more conventional themes of life, love and death (“Sympathy”, “The Remainder” and onward). Whereas the Go-Go’s wanted to take a “Vacation” from the oppressive mundanity of everyday life (mani-pedis for everyone!), Sleater-Kinney get to work chopping down lethal assumptions and political corruption (“The good old boys are back on top again / And if we let them lead us blindly / The past becomes the future once again” reads the daring “Combat Rock”). While Britney and Christina use their tits and ass to lull teenage wasteland into a sheep-like buying frenzy, Corin, Carrie and Janet are decrying the image machine that makes media gods out of minor actors (“When the lights are shining / Will you see my skin / Or just the shell / That I’m packaged in” asks the hard-hitting “Hollywood Ending”).

Such bravery and honesty is the reason that everyone from the weekly freebies to the more conservative Newsweek has seized upon Sleater-Kinney as the savior of a political rock ‘n’ roll left behind in favor of the vapid bling-bling pipe dreams filling the airwaves at the turn of the century’s stomach. And One Beat does not disappoint: filled with energetic, involved vocals from all three members, slashing guitar interplay and even a rousing horn interval on the old-school punk-funk of “Step Aside” (where SK channels their own version of the Supremes to the tee — “Disassemble your discrimination” has to be the coolest backing vocal I’ve heard in quite a while), Sleater-Kinney’s latest activist missile seeks out and does not deviate from its target.

Filled from top to bottom with three-minute gems, One Beat is a worthwhile listen no matter your mood, creed or color. Consider the anthemic “Light-Rail Coyote”, a tone poem on Sleater-Kinney’s native Oregon replete with a back-page picture of a lonely coyote trapped on a local Portland train. Save for a few addictive breaks, it’s one long, thunderous downstrum riffing on a cultural geography of hookers, punks and hipsters that provides a curious, soulful sustenance. Or the fiery, syncopated “One Beat”, whose integrationist title betrays its tales of dissolution and desperation (“Your word for me is fusion / But is real change an illusion”). A stop-start strum feast, “One Beat” features Sleater-Kinney at their musical and lyrical best; Brownstein and Tucker’s vocal trade-offs are matched in intensity only by their impresive six-string interplay.

Then there are the out-and-out rockers like “Far Away” — a song that may or may not be about September 11 — whose frenetic chorus’ Rodney King sentiment (“WHY CAN’T I GET ALONG WITH YOU?” — capped thusly on the lyric sheet) brushes up roughly against its images of exploding worlds and wimpy presidents in hiding. Or the bracing “O2” (for oxygen, just like the Oprah channel), a no-holds-barred meditation a relationship gone wrong (“Crawled out of the mud / This filth you called your love” — ouch!). The list goes on.

The bottom line here is that Sleater-Kinney have indeed come to save rock from the terminal boredom and self-satisfaction it manufactures like so much unwanted Columbia House mail. And whether they’re tackling the American war hawks like Bush and Cheney, knee-jerk sociopolitics (“Dissent’s not treason but they talk like it’s the same”) or good girls who are lured away from better grades and fairy godmothers by their own budding maturity (the cool-as-shit “Prisstina”), the riot grrrls from the PacNorth aren’t afraid to land a few illegal blows when they get everyone on the ground. That alone is a reason to smile. And buy.

And as much as One Beat answers its own question (“Where is the questioning, where is the protest song?” the trio asks in “Combat Rock”), it never gets redundant or dull, mainly because it invests just as much time in its sonic artistry as it does in its activist mind. In other words, Sleater-Kinney doesn’t just talk the talk — they walk the walk.

Walk with them.