Sleater-Kinney breaks up

i like(d) sleater-kinney a whole bunch.

And wow. Although it makes a certain amount of sense, I guess -- The Woods sort of feels like an end-point.

Wish I'd seen 'em live more than once -- they were fantastic.

I've seen them about 15 times. I knew it was getting a little excessive when I met Carrie Brownstein one time and told her how many times I'd seen them. She looked at me like I was completely insane.

It got to the point where I was getting dirty looks from Corin Tucker for wearing baseball caps at their shows.

What a run though! I saw them last summer supporting that half-assed Woods album: a scorcher of a show, as always.

Still Gear OTM, and I hope they'll come back in like 5 years or something. "Indefinite hiatus" is much better than an angry breakup. I do await the inevitable rarities compilation with baited breath though.

checking to see if there are any new england dates on this last tour. what a bummer! i love pretty much everything they've ever done.

And I definitely thought The Woods was a step in a different direction for them; not just with the music - I loved that needles-all-the-way-in-the-red production - but with the lyrics, too (at least Corin's).

I'm bummed, anyway.

i wonder what they'll do on their own now? i heard rumors of janet weiss doing some weird tribal drumming type stuff lately, which would be better than recent quasi i'm sure. i'd love to hear a carrie brownstein solo joint, too.

Judging by the crowd at Lolla, I think their set will be met with a collective shrug by most in attendance. I don't think the hardcore S-K fans are going to be shelling out for the hefty tickets and dealing with all the other b.s. just for a 35-40 minute set. I'd love to be proven wrong and see a huge, appreciative crowd there to support them - but I don't see it reaching any level of "insanity".

I would definitely want to hear a Carrie solo album--I'm thinking she should do a sort of '70's folk-pop singer-songwriter thing, with Janet on the drums (and guitar solos).

They were awesome live.

that's a pretty ace career

I agree that the Woods must have been a really hard record to make. I think they seemed to be both frustrated and enervated about the political state of the U.S., nevermind Bush's winning the election. When I saw them live during The Woods tour, I personally felt a bit of this desperation in their playing and singing, and it made songs like "Steep Air" sound tragic and desolate.

I knew I shoulda seen them when they came to town. This happened to me with the Delgados, too!

Luckily I had the good fortune to at least see Mclusky before they split.

Adios, S-K! What a fucking great band.

(Exception: Radiohead, who I didn't feel like seeing last week and oddly don't regret skipping.)

I'll really miss these guys, though, esp. since they came closest to what Fugazi was up to while Fugazi was on their own indefinite hiatus. But with bigger hooks and delivered with smiles!

I wonder if maybe they were one of those bands that does very very well in an indie/dive bar/house show context, up to the point of very large bars, but starts to feel sort of disconnected when you get up to arena stages. I mean, they've been doing Pearl Jam tours for a few years now but I wonder if it started to feel weird. They certainly were pretty far apart on that Atlanta stage last summer - while I thought the energy level was higher than ever, I could imagine that it would be weird for them. And meanwhile I'm not really clear on what Sub Pop did for them; I wonder how much shooting those videos cost them, etc. And of course Corin's kid....etc., etc., etc....

I have to admit that I'm sort of disinterested in solo work from them for some reason - I've never checked out Quasi, Cadallaca was okay if you're into that kind of thing, the Spells disappointingly dull. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

But what a whole! Gear says it pretty well with just a straight list of albums. They could have retired at Dig Me Out and it would still be showing up on "best albums of the 90s/indie/post-riot-grrl/whatever" lists forever. The Woods is bloody great all the way through; One Beat and All Hands take more chances and explorations than they get credit for (it's interesting how everyone forgot the production flourishes on One Beat when the line on The Woods became "they've finally ditched that lame, shitty sound they've been using for the last four albums!!!!")... and The Hot Rock is simultaneously the one I call my favorite and the one I put on the least, maybe because I burned out on its intricate hookiness without really realizing it.

With the exception of the debut they never put out an album without at least one stone cold classic on it. They worked hard, they riffed, they kicked up a storm, and they could conjure catchiness out of a few spare notes and some raw guts. There were always some really "ehh" lyrics somewhere on the record but then they would drop a line that totally, totally nails it and leaves you wide-eyed and inspired. They were always pushing themselves, and there are few bands I know of, from any age or scene, more fearless in tackling difficult emotions, or more equipped in talent and technique to convey those emotions and that difficulty. One of two, maybe three bands of their generation by whom I own more than one album, of whom I consider myself an actual fan, who really meant something to me. RIP.

I'm pissed I never saw them live, which is the same way I feel about Fugazi. I'm moving the general NW area pretty soon, and I hope that they do some sort of final hometown blowout in Portland or Olympia because I'll definitely go.

I missed them when they swung by in May. Surely there must be some way to make enough noise to get an extended farewell tour going??

"A Real Man" = classic. Better recognize!

Sterling's OTM. All Hands On The Bad One was the last S-K album I seriously listened to, and I can't remember a single song title from it, let alone hum a few bars... I find late period S-K full of sound and fury yet signifying naught, but the one-two of Dig Me Out / The Hot Rock is enough to put them in the record books.

One of their last shows is at The 9:30 Club, I imagine that show will be intense. They should've booked 3 nights at CBGBs in NYC.

oh yeah and of course they shouldn't have broken up after THR!! sheesh.

I would pay $70 to see their last show at a festival. I'm paying $130x2 just to see Gnarls Barkley at a festival which is crazier I'm sure.

Break up at "Dig Me Out" so they can be relegated to a riot-grrl footnote? No thanks.

I sorta agree w/ Alfred. The Hot Rock is sleek but there's some undercurrent of dread throughout - listening to it is like knowing your partner's keeping a secret from you. That tension is what makes the album their most interesting.

Critcally it was well-received, but my perception is that the general audience's reaction was "meh".

Break up at "Dig Me Out" so they can be relegated to a riot-grrl footnote? No thanks.

Well, that's one way of looking about it.

Break up at "Dig Me Out" so they can be relegated to a riot-grrl footnote? No thanks.

Well, that's one way of looking about it.

To expand on this point... A band which soldiers on past its expiration date increases the chances it will be remembered; growing audience base, more press, bigger catalog. On the other hand, by increasing the suck-to-sweet ratio of their catalog a band can make it more difficult for future generations to find a proper entry point for appreciation. Frankly, I don't think their post-Hot Rock material will age well (tho I'm probably a minority opinion on that one).

I am puzzled by the love for One Beat here. It's the only record of theirs I find too boring to listen to, although I like "Oxygen" and "Light Rail Coyote" well enough. And to those who say they can't remember a single song on All Hands, I say: You're no rock-and-roll fun.

Most days my favorite is Dig Me Out, but sometimes it's Hot Rock, or even The Woods or Doctor ("I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" still probably being their single best song). And they have always, always brought it live. A band I love.

Unless of course Alfred means they should've knocked off after The Hot Rock for themselves, which is an entirely different matter.

The only album I never got into was All Hands On The Bad One. I still own it, just don't think I've ever listened to it more than once or twice. Everything else they did was ace.

"The Hot Rock" is the S-K album I've listened to/liked the *least*.

S-K are the first band I've felt a surge of defensiveness over following a breakup; probably because they're the only band I love to have broken up with detractors aplenty. Nobody picked on Mclusky.

IMO "The Woods" is their best - refreshing in its vitality, cohesiveness and sheer heft. It's sad that they didn't seem to find any sort of catharsis in recording it, cause it sure sounds like a 48-minute revelation on record.

Any drumming deficiencies can be overlooked when there are songs like Good Things and Joey Ramone.

"Little Mouth"
"Little Babies"
"Stay Where You Are"
"Wilderness"
"Turn it On"
"Dig Me Out"
"The Size of our Love"
"Get Up"
"Step Aside"
"Oh!"

(xpost: thanks, Michaelangelo!)

No way. Laura MacFarlane is a great, expressive drummer; perfect for their early sound and totally underrated in her contribution. I don't think her style would have suited the bigger, more rock approach of Dig Me Out and afterward. Indeed, listening to the ninetynine CDs, you hear Laura going in a more experimental direction at the same time S-K become more of a rock band.

Count me among those who heard diminishing returns in the last few S-K albums and isn't broken up over their hiatus. I do think it's wise for them to leave their options open. If anyone can pull of a Mission of Burma-esque seamless comeback, it's them.

yeah, that's CLEARLY what i was saying, good job.

it's a tough one but here's my pox:

get up!
modern girl
youth decay
light rail coyote
ballad of a ladyman
oh!
quarter to three
call the doctor
step aside
burn, don't freeze

The Hot Rock is loopy, dense, and the record that got me really into the band, I just couldn't get enough of the way the guitars and the vocals played off of each other without just turning into chaos or ever losing the rhythm. "Burn, Don't Freeze" unquestionably goes in my POX, and it's the song I use to try and sell people on the band. And I haven't looked up the POO Sleater Kinney thread, but I know "Get Up" was all over that shit, so homie don't even play.

All Hands on the Bad One was the first one I heard and the first one I bought, on the strength of catching "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun" on MTV2 back in ye olde college dorm. It took me forever to get into it - really till I got it on vinyl, actually. I think this has to do with tracklisting - it feels overlong for some reason that I've never quite placed. So along with One Beat it's definitely a "grower" for the fan....but look at what you get: "Rock n' Roll Fun," their straightest and best shiny pop number, "Youth Decay," "Milkshake n' Honey" for pete's sake! There's some great material here. I'll concede that there's a stretch where it starts to feel just a bit same-y, which is where we come to...

One Beat my least favorite of their LPs, but, as I said above, a grower - I can't put my finger on exactly what doesn't work here, but there's a certain roteness to some of the performances, and certainly there's a high concentration of wince-worthy lyrics (especially the Bush and 9/11 stuff - one of S-K's strengths was subtlety in dealing with personal conflicts, but somehow with political conflicts they turn into teenagers with Michael Moore patches on their bookbags)... But! All that said! You get the magnificent "Oh!", with its singalong "oh-wa-oh" hook and that PERFECT Moog line... the marching climax of "Prisstina," and of course "Hollywood Ending," which picks the Dig Me Out sound back up for one last ass-kicking mosh-starter. Throughout, it's the songs with the fun new production touches that stick in the mind the most - does that mean the songs aren't strong? I dunno. If they'd broken up after this record it would have felt really anticlimactic, and it would never be my suggested jumping-on point, but it's a complete record and by NO means a dud.

And then, of course, The Woods, which manages to balance a mile-high wall of rock-and-roll thunderhead (as exemplified by "The Fox," one of the best openings to any rock album I've ever heard) with reinvigorated, just-slightly-tweaked explorations of their old strengths, e.g. "Jumpers" and "Modern Girl." When people say it's a completely new sound for them, I understood what they mean but I don't agree - it's an expansion of their sound, with some amazing new chops that I frankly never expect to see at a band at their sixth/seventh record. (New tricks, yes; tightened-up technique, yes - actual new powers, no.) As such, I think it's a wonderful note to go out on, in the sense that it showcases them doing everything they could do, in most cases at the peak of their playing.

Simon H. is right on in calling it cohesive, and to that I would add that it's concise - it delivers its punches one after another and doesn't overstay its welcome, which is probably the main thing that keeps All Hands and One Beat as near-great growers: they could both stand to lose about two songs each, and would be substantially tighter for it.

Edward III writes:

On the other hand, by increasing the suck-to-sweet ratio of their catalog a band can make it more difficult for future generations to find a proper entry point for appreciation.

I certainly know what you're getting at here; I think we all know the difficulty of wanting to get into a band but being stymied by a parade of dubious-looking records you've never heard of in the used bin. "I know these can't all be good," we think. However, it seems like a kind of weak argument against making more records, especially given the context of an indie band like Sleater-Kinney, whose new fans are going to come from word-of-mouth, older sisters and brothers, and magazine writeups about how if you like Band X of Today you totally need to go listen to Dig Me Out, The Hot Rock and/or The Woods. Once you're a fan, imperfect records like One Beat can work as growers - you find things to love in them and recognize them as part of the overall story of your new favorite band. Entry-point albums are great, and tend to be the overall best records (although there's plenty of exceptions to that one), but great bands will end up making great records that are not great entry points, I think.

Time for breakfast!

Out of curiosity I just checked and it gets better.

As a neutral observer, I don't read it like that at all. One early poster said something to that effect, but most of their later albums have gotten praise from one quarter or another. The pre-Janet first album seems "not to count." Going by the POX thread, either it or All Hands are the bad ones.

(xpost, and now people are liking it, too)

mitya: As a neutral observer, I don't read it like that at all.

OK, maybe I'm a little defensive. But:

It's about time. They should've wrapped it up with The Hot Rock.
I didn't even like The Woods that much.
I didn't like it at all
the growth stopped around All Hands.
i can't really remember nearly any of their songs from All Hands on
I find late period S-K full of sound and fury yet signifying naught
they should've split after Dig Me Out.
Albums released after The Hot Rock range from okay to almost great, but are inessential.

Taken out of context, of course, and many of the people I'm quoting make IMO fabulous points about the band (Edward III is dead-on about the Hot Rock's undercurrent of dread and the fascination of the resulting tension). I guess I just figure that while the spotlight is on Sleater-Kinney it's my best chance to try and ramble a bunch of incoherent crap about how good their near-great albums are (and how flat-out great The Woods is), for the benefit of adoring future archive-searchers of ILM and Doctor Casino fans generally.

And I definitely feel like the "they've jumped the shark" theme has been a big part of discussion of Sleater-Kinney in the 2000's - like they represent some sort of indie niche dinosaur band that we didn't have to take seriously as a major part of the music scene anymore. The record needs to be set straight: they continued to push themselves as a band, even on the records where they supposedly didn't, and the results were positive if admittedly mixed on a couple of them.

Before this thread started, the only S-K I'd heard were "The Fox," "Wilderness," and "What's Mine Is Yours," which I sought out shortly after The Woods was released, based on whatever reveiew I saw. So it must have been a pretty strong review, given that I'd ignored the band up to that point.

This has been kind of a fun exercise for me today, starting from (basically) zero and working through the catalog in one sitting. Not often that you (well, me, anyway) gets to do that anymore.

yes! i just put it on cuz i had to hear it after making up my pox.

xpost: yeah, the all hands songs work better as mixtape material than jostled up against each other. but the (admitted) didacticism of those songs doesn't really bother me -- there are some good punky lines scattered in there ("i'm so sick of tests, go ahead and flunk my ass") and the tunes are nice and spiky. i actually think the swallowed-words-as-eating-disorder metaphor on "youth decay" works well, i just don't like the title.

but it's true that "eye cream and thigh cream, how 'bout a get high cream?" is possibly the worst opening line on any record by a band i love.

And then you don't even have to listen to side two if you don't want to.

Hm - is that last post really on the S-K thread?

There's a tendency for a band's latter works to get a consensus nod as "great" when in fact there are stronger earlier works - it's just how the indie system works, latter albums get more press and sell more. Sometimes history corrects itself, but sometimes the same lines get repeated over and over. I've been burned a couple times picking up a band's "definitive" work and not being too impressed, only to find later that 2 or 3 albums prior they hit their peak. That said, the Interweb has changed this a bit, you can get a hold of an entire discography in an afternoon and figure out what's good yourself. Just saying that if the first thing I ever heard from Sleater Kinney was The Woods or All Hands On The Bad One I probably wouldn't go poking around any further in the pile...

re: X should just break up - Well in truth it's all Monday morning quarterbacking innit? Though the general progression is usually entropic, nobody can really tell when a band's dead, dying, or on the verge of a major breakthrough. There really is no argument for not making a record, you never know what's going to happen.

But, alas, kvetching is fun!

I wouldn't get bent out of shape if someone said The Fall should've broken up after Dragnet. It's not like you've got that time machine working yet and even if you did, the band's not likely to obey your call for their cessation unless you said hey I'm from the future and they were intimidated by your sci-fi prowess and decided better break up now rather than face the potential scourge of angry mobs of future time travellers...

(x-post)

There's a tendency for a band's latter works to get a consensus nod as "great" when in fact there are stronger earlier works - it's just how the indie system works, latter albums get more press and sell more. - ok i'm not sure where exactly this statement might apply but decidedly not to indie in the united states.
-- j blount (jamesbloun...)

I'd rather listen to Bad Moon Rising than Daydream Nation or Goo. Do you think Cat Power is going to be remembered for What Would The Community Think rather than You Are Free or (god forfend) The Greatest?

(Not to break up the flow, but - anything to salvage from the first, self-titled LP? Not a word about it yet...)

Just saying that if the first thing I ever heard from Sleater Kinney was The Woods or All Hands On The Bad One I probably wouldn't go poking around any further in the pile...

Well, I can sort of understand that and it's your opinion after all. I think a lot of people got an instant "holy shit, this kicks ass!" reaction off The Woods, and certainly not all of them were previous fans shocked by a new direction - my friend Indy got into the band through this album. All Hands is certainly more of a fan's album, but then, I dunno - I just finished up listening to it and it's pretty solid. I could see somebody buying it and it being the only thing they needed from the band for a long while - that's what happened for me, after all! Whereas Dig Me Out is the kind of album where if you love it you immediately go "What else do they have that I can buy?"

Incidentally, my heart goes out to Tim Ellison for steadfastedly discussing only Beatles '65 in this thread and leaving it up to the reader to determine whether it's all meant as a complex analogy to the tracklist of All Hands On the Bad One, or if he just really wants to talk about Beatles '65. OTM about "Mr. Moonlight" and "Rock N Roll Music" in any case.

mitya - somebody was upping "A Real Man" upthread - I guess this is the next record for me to listen back through in my Sleater-Kinney mourning period. Will comment later tonight...

anyway, i think it's a little hard to classify the singing. it has punk in it, and metal, and that detached indie cool (especially carrie), but can also be pretty in a surprisingly conventional way (although even then there's always a sense that corin is sort of barely restraining herself). i'm not sure how well either one of them can carry a tune, per se, but they're some of my favorite singers.

How about outside yr indie fishbowl?

you think pavement are going to be remembered for slanted + enchanted rather than terror twilight?

That would be the difference between a "tendency" and a "certainty."

do you think evol is namechecked more than nyc ghosts?

No, but I've read loads of press focusing on Daydream Nation and beyond as the locus of their "great work" and heard current SY fans dismiss the earlier "amatuer" stuff.

do you think chronic town is held in higher regard than around the sun?

How many people who own an REM CD even know what the hell Chronic Town is?

when people talk about patti smith they always talk about gung ho but how often do they bring up horses?

Well, Patti was always on a major label, so not really applicable here...

and why do you think people go on and on about candy apple grey while zen arcade toils in obscurity? why is 'waiting room' fugazi's least known song?

I don't know, why do you think they call it dope?

how come when people go on about sleater-kinney they always talk about the woods but never bring up 'i wanna be yr joey ramone' or dig me out?'

Time will tell...

(Not to break up the flow, but - anything to salvage from the first, self-titled LP? Not a word about it yet...)

"A Real Man" = classic

that won't hold any water upon closer examination

But it sure was fun!

-- gear (speed.to.roa...)

Nothing holds water upon closer examination.

http://www.aversion.com/bands/sleaterkinney/images/sleater-kinney.jpg

That's correct, no one outside indieland knows about Sonic Youth (whose Rather Ripped was featured in the weekly Best Buy circular last week), Cat Power (who is frequently namedropped in the New Yorker when she's not dropping trou there), or Sleater-Kinney (who get coverage in obscure indie publications like Time and Rolling Stone). You're right, I must be on Mars and how does Britain have fuckall to do with this?

not saying this is bad or wrong, just think it's interesting that nobody ever seems to be mixed or on-the-fence abt sleater-kinney.

I also love the use of the contrasting voices on Hot Rock, that's what makes that record great to those who love it, and why "Burn, Don't Freeze" makes a lot of the POX lists (since B,DF is the apex of that technique by the band). What does it mean that on The Woods there is barely any difference between the two voices? Brownstein seemed to have completely appropriated Tucker's style on a bunch of the songs.

*holds up sign for "camp middle ground"*

-- m coleman (writeco...), June 29th, 2006.

HI DERE

One more hour
The drama you've been craving
Little Babies
Dance Song '97
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
No Rock n' Roll Fun
Get Up
Oh!
Step Aside
Sympathy
What's Mine is Yours

HI DERE

hey kids let's start a tribute band! I'll dress in combat-boot drag. coming soon to BBKings' on 42st: The Your Joey Ramones

That said, the situation isn't as dire as it was 10-15 years ago. I'm *glad* people are still talking about Bad Moon Rising and EVOL 'cause for years they were ignored and/or dissed. The improving conditions probably have something to do with widespread reissues, high availability of music via p2p / eBay / Amazon, and the wealth of info available on-line.

But when given a choice between interpreting an artist's career as artistic progression of growth vs. entropic decline into diminishing returns, the mainstream tends to support the former view while indie folk support the latter. It's like you've never read a review by Christgau or something. If you say, "Well, who cares what they say," that's a different argument than, "It doesn't happen at all."

still beats talking about sleater-kinney (sorry folks!).

album all-time rank

slanted and enchanted 114
terror twilight 1604

daydream nation 82
sonic nurse 1526

murmur 58
up 1346
(around the sun and reveal apparently didn't rank in the top 2000 and hence weren't ranked at all i guess)

let it be 228
pleased to meet me 761
(all shook down and don't tell a soul didn't rank)

dig me out 577
one beat 1026
BUT IN FAIRNESS TO EDWARD HE MAY WELL BE ONTO A POINT
the woods 616

the greatest and you are free beat moon pix too (the inside scoop from el scandalo knows of what he speaks)!

by and large though i still hold that with indie rock the cliche is 'the early stuff is better'. to quote 'still at the top of his game'/'rock n roll's roger clemens' billy joel - i may be wrong you may be right.

by and large though i still hold that with indie rock the cliche is 'the early stuff is better'.

Yeah, we agree there. All I'm saying is that mainstream folk looking at indie from the outside don't always see it the same way, and given that they have the larger audience they can end up writing the history books...

yeah, esp considering how fairly irrelevant to the culture at large the indie rock scene or rock criticism are any sorta mainstream notice can easily overwhelm what was there beforehand - one vw commercial had a much huger impact than 30 years of crit gushing and artist namechecking did with nick drake. an american idol entrant sings 'one more hour' or some detergant uses 'ironclad' for their jingle and pow - that's what sleater-kinney's known for, that's their legacy.

stence since you got matador sales stats i'd heard that for the longest time the top selling matador titles were all the liz phair and then cr, cr - is this true now? what are they?

Of course, you'd have to be able to find a copy of Dark Continent to play this game...

Edward, you say mainstream folk have a larger audience and get to write the history books, but the question is: how many people are paying attention and how many people give a shit?

you totally should photoshop a broken bat and Mike Piazza into the cover of Glass Houses.

Pavement is different because they had their indie smash from the start.

That VW commercial had a huge impact. From a VH1 article: U.S. sales of Nick Drake's Pink Moon album rose from 6,000 copies, prior to the song's use in a Cabrio commercial, to 74,000 copies in 2000.

Edward, you say mainstream folk have a larger audience and get to write the history books, but the question is: how many people are paying attention and how many people give a shit?

Just to clarify, the mainstream doesn't *always* get the last word, but its influence is stronger. Who's paying attention and who gives a shit? Anyone with more than a passing interest in music, I guess, which would be millions of people.

That acclaimedmusic.net site is interesting, here are Eno's rankings:

Another Green World 173
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts 316
Here Come the Warm Jets 351
Before and After Science 503
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) 903
Ambient 1: Music for Airports 1213
Wrong Way Up 2091

I've would've predicted much bigger finishes for Taking Tiger Mountain (though I'm not a big fan of it myself) and Here Come The Warm Jets. Is this still a Sleater-Kinney thread?

Geez. You would have thought most people would at least know "Rapture", "The Tide Is High", or "One way or Another"* by now.

*Certainly the most overexposed old song of the past few years.

x-post

crystal ballroom remains more famous to me for being the place where little richard fired jimi hendrix.

What, Pavement and Boards of Canada shoulda been bigger?

x-post: question answered!

Taken as a whole the material is really interesting - the band seems to be at this midway point between riot grrl, Sonic Youth, and, I dunno, Helium? Nobody's really found their signature styles yet, and the vocals in particular feel like a total different band when they get up to the loud parts - there's no outsize wail from Corin, more of a Kathleen Hanna roar/mewl...or, on "Lora's Song" some sort of nasal Cyndi Lauper impression. The guitar approach is grungier, with a lot of big distorted chug-along chords accented by the kind of wobbly leads that would later be the key to their whole sound. Some of the tracks, like the very very good "Be Yr Mama," and "Slow Song" I think point very directly to where they were heading.

Stepping back and hearing it as just an album rather than a step in the Sleater-Kinney canon, there's some great stuff. "Don't Think You Wanna" and "How To Play Dead," those are great tracks! But it definitely fails the jumping-on-point test, I think, just for the aforementioned dud tracks. The last two especially fall off the boat, even with the Courtney Love cigarette shriek on "The Last Song."

Incidentally, I did some indie rock karaoke grunt work today and ended up spending a fair amount of time with the deep cuts on "One Beat," and sort of discovered "Funeral Song" for the first time. That one's great! Should have been the last song on the album - there's that wack All Hands/One Beat tracklist problem again.

Also, am I alone in wishing they'd put out an album of Smashing Pumpkins covers? I first hit on the idea over in this thread and I still think it's a good one. They could call it, you know, "I Am One Beat" or "ZerOh!" or something.

I have to admit I was incredibly let down with the version I found of the "Hunger Strike" duet with Pearl Jam - Corin seems to be holding herself back from really taking the Chris Cornell part, which she should be totally capable of rocking. With her singing a good octave lower than Chris just doesn't cut through the sturmundrang the way it should. In fact, I would think it was Carrie singing if not for Eddie's declaration at the end: "Senora Corin Tucker... and I don't know, uh, yo no se en Espanol, but, uh, I love to, Chris Cornell too. [pause for massive wave of applause] Bueno amigo." Oh well. She sort of picks it up halfway through, so maybe this was just a weak night on the tour that got mp3ized...

DC show webcast tomorrow

tonight was awesome and i don't particularly like them!

Seconded, I love their live "More than a Feeling" rendition.

Rescheduled for tonight. I am looking forward to it.

My favorite is Springsteen's The Promised Land, which they used to do a few years back. No covers last night sadly, but it was still one of the best times I've seen them.

They opened with Start Together.

NOthing from the first album.
Only thing from Call The Doctor was the title track.

5 from Dig Me Out: Dig Me Out, One More Hour (last song) Turn It On(2nd to last song) Words and Guitar, and The Drama You've been Craving.

Hot Rock: Title track, Start Together, Get Up and a couple more.

All Hands on the Bad ONe: Ladyman, Youth Decay and a few others. I haven't listened to that record in years so I'm not as familiar.

One Beat: Light Rail Coyote, Sympathy, Oh, and a few others. Sadly no title track which as of today is my favorite song of theirs.

The entire new record, which got the most exicting responses.

were all you dudes there too? i thought the sound sorta sucked at the beginning, but maybe it was where i was standing, and things got pretty great pretty fast, and epic-ish around the midpoint, peaking with the Let's Call It Love/Entertain jam (of course). the greatest-hits mini second-set/first encore was just gravy, and i loved the bittersweet version of one more hour. lol at carrie spraying the crowd with water.

Start Together
The Fox
The Drama You've Been Craving [these two might be switched]
Wilderness
Jumpers
Things You Say
The Hot Rock
Rollercoaster
Ironclad
Night Light
What's Mine is Yours
Modern Girl
Light Rail Coyote
Let's Call it Love
Entertain
Words and Guitar

Encore:
Jenny
Ballad of a Ladyman (audience chose this over Milkshake 'n' Honey)
I Want to be Your Joey Ramone
Dance Song '97
One More Hour (another audience pick)

At Tramps, after the show my friends told me that Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth literally walked right into me. I didn't even notice, I was so transfixed with what was happening onstage.

The way they act I hope it's really just to take a break for a year or two because I've never seen them that happy onstage. Corin, flirting with the audience (in JEANS!?); Carrie, the baddest dervish on the planet; Janet, playing so hard she went through her tom; the whole band so loud you had to lean forward to not get blown away... Picts to follow with any luck.

I gave my friend the setlist, which wasn't nearly as career spanning as the DC list. Mostly from "The Woods," plus "Turn It On."

Oh, yeah, they were good. I'm shocked at the number of people who apparently skipped S-K for the Violent Femmes. Who are find and all, but who also play every other street festival in Chicago each summer.

http://www.sleaterkinneytorrents.com/ (no that's not a joke, it's a real site)

and the msg board on sleater-kinney.net; there's a trading forum.

At Tramps, after the show my friends told me that Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth literally walked right into me. I didn't even notice, I was so transfixed with what was happening onstage.

wow, tramps! how soon after that show did tramps close? the last show i remember seeing there was in '96, i think.

I leared today that it's hard to shoot while dancing; also, I shoot better while dancing than Ryan P'fork does standing around, so fuck you 930 for trying to take my camera.

The show I saw, they were real tight, nailed everything, excellent performance. I mean, you can hear it on NPR.

But for some reason the experience didn't blow me away completely? Not sure why. I enjoyed it as much as I could. Maybe because at some point the music felt awkward to rock out to. I mean, I've always loved them on record, I don't know why they weren't stunning.
But the crowd was enthusiastic, that was great, and I'm happy I finally did see them live.

https://www.subpop.com/news/2014/09/02/sub_pop_to_release_7xlp_sleater_kinney_box_set_oct_21st

today:
Robert Christgau ‏@rxgau

The Sleater-Kinney Box coming out Tuesday was solid out in preorder early this month. Any preorderer who'd like to tell me why, let me know.

huh?

That fuckin guy.

dude depends on the kindness of strangers more than blanche dubois

some s-k vinyl is oop and goes for relatively big bucks. i'm not signing up to twitter to tell him that tho.

http://www.discogs.com/sell/release/693317?ev=rb

That dude should learn to google. Took me 5 seconds to see that the new limited edition colored vinyl sold out in advance, but that they are already repressing in black vinyl.

PLEASE READ THIS VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE, AS IT WILL HELP INFORM YOU AS TO WHAT YOU ARE BUYING!
*The limited edition, colored vinyl box set is SOLD OUT.*
-However, due to overwhelming demand for this pre-order, we are creating a second edition of the deluxe box set which will be pressed on black vinyl, that will be expected to ship by mid-December. (Updated 10/10/14; 2:50pm PST)

Maybe he was waiting for Sub Pop to tell him personally?

Back in the day, Ahmet Ertegun himself would hand deliver new releases to Xgau's door.

which he would answer naked

tempted to respond 'so you can write a glib, shitty one-line review of it.'

haha -- writing one-line reviews of SK is exactly what he didn't do.

S-K? O-K."

"These diamonds in the rough rock hard. A girl's best friend, a guy's best friend, they belong to everyone, unless you, like me, don't want to share."

B+.

Sleater-Kinney

Sleater-Kinney [Chainsaw, 1995] A-
Call the Doctor [Chainsaw, 1996] A
Dig Me Out [Kill Rock Stars, 1997] A
The Hot Rock [Kill Rock Stars, 1999] A
All Hands on the Bad One [Kill Rock Stars, 2000] A-
One Beat [Kill Rock Stars, 2002] A
The Woods [Sub Pop, 2005] A
Consumer Guide Reviews:

Sleater-Kinney [Chainsaw, 1995]
Heavens to Betsy's warbly wailer Corin Tucker joins Excuse 17's solemn screamer Carrie Brownstein for ten songs in twenty-two minutes, and voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar they figure out love by learning to hate. Three different lyrics reject the penis soi-même with a fervor that could pass for disgust, and while their same-sex one-on-ones aren't exactly odes to joy, they convey a depth of feeling that could pass for passion. In these times of principled irony and shallowness for its own sake, that's enough to make them heroines and outsiders simultaneously. A-
Call the Doctor [Chainsaw, 1996]
Like the blues, punk is a template that shapes young misfits' sense of themselves, and like the blues it takes many forms. This is a new one, and it's damn blueslike. Powered by riffs that seem unstoppable even though they're not very fast, riding melodies whose irresistibility renders them barely less harsh, Corin Tucker's enormous voice never struggles more inspirationally against the world outside than when it's facing down the dilemmas of the interpersonal--dilemmas neither eased nor defined by her gender preferences, dilemmas as bound up with family as they are with sex. As partner/rival/Other Carrie Brownstein puts it in an eloquently tongue-tied moment: "It's just my stuff." Few if any have played rock's tension-and-release game for such high stakes--revolution as existentialism, electric roar as acne remedy. They wanna be our Joey Ramone, who can resist that one? But squint at the booklet and you'll see they also want to be our Thurston Moore. They want it both ways, every which way. And most of the time they get it. A

Dig Me Out [Kill Rock Stars, 1997]
One reason you know they're young is that they obviously believe they can rock and roll at this pitch forever. Whatever the verbal message of their intricate, deeply uptempo simplicity--less sexual angst, more rock-as-romance--it's overrun by their excited mastery and runaway glee. Like a new good lover the second or third time, they're so confident of their ability to please that they just can't stop. And this confidence is collective: Corin and Carrie chorus-trade like the two-headed girl, dashing and high-stepping around on Janet Weiss's shoulders. What a ride. A

The Hot Rock [Kill Rock Stars, 1999]
What's hard to get used to here, and what's also freshest and perhaps best, is how Corin and Carrie's voices intertwine--even reading the booklet it's hard to keep track of who's saying what to whom about what, as if they'd fallen in love with (or to) the Velvets' "Murder Mystery." Not that meanings would be crystalline in any case, or that they should be. With Cadallaca an outlet for Corin's girlish ways, S-K emerges as a diary of adulthood in all its encroaching intricacy. I mean, the guitars don't crunch like they used to either, and that's the very reason "Get Up" sounds like death and desire at the same time. The reason "The Size of Our Love" sounds like death, on the other hand, is that sometimes love is death. Nobody ever said maturity would be fun and games. A

All Hands on the Bad One [Kill Rock Stars, 2000]
Locked into a visceral style and sound that always maximizes their considerable and highly specific gifts, they could no more make a bad album than the Rolling Stones in 1967. Unfortunately, that doesn't render them immune to the experiential droughts that afflict all touring musicians, or to the media-studies clichés they fall back into when they get hung up on the meaning of their careers. So everything that's right with the three-part synergy and herky-jerk dynamics of "Was It a Lie?" doesn't convince me that the media victim it bemoans died so vainly or so significantly, and in general I prefer these songs as songs when they adduce the musicians' separate lives rather then their collective mission. But play "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun" on your broadcast medium of choice and I'll whoop and holler like I'd requested it myself. A-

One Beat [Kill Rock Stars, 2002]
Sleater-Kinney is one of three unapologetically political bands to respond to September 2001's world-change with August 2002 albums, and it's remarkable how different they are. The Mekons are cynical and defiant; Springsteen is spiritual and uplifting. Yet both seem worn out, as if neither defiance nor uplift can get them out of bed in the morning. Sleater-Kinney, on the other hand, go for defiant uplift and seem energized by the challenge. Probably it isn't the stance that energizes them--it's their energy that powers the stance. Not only are they a generation younger, they're riding the crest of a wild success burdened by neither the Mekons' quarter-century of subsistence nor Springsteen's felt responsibility to 10 million consumers--not to mention that Corin spent 2001 with her new baby, who plays a suitably small and crucial role in her September 11 song. Throughout they bubble and shriek--literally in the opener, where Corin's "bubble in a sound wave" is the secret of both social and nuclear fusion, and in the career guitar line Carrie lays under "Oh!" Let "Step Aside" do its thing and you'll "shake a tail feather for peace and love" no matter what your weary self thinks of protest songs. A

The Woods [Sub Pop, 2005]
Corin Tucker's abrasive warble is made for a Zeppelin move that seems inevitable now that it's here, and when the lyrics fail to mesh, or veer toward the sociologically corny, her proven ability to plow such quibbles is beefed up from the backup muscle. Nevertheless, the metal affinities are basically spiritual. Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev hand Dave Fridmann ain't John David Kalodner. Although the album is definitely loud, it's also raw, with no hint of the symphonic, yet at the same time it's a melodic highlight of an honorably tuneful catalog. And come down to it, the words are pretty good. I like the one about the boho losers. And the hungry-so-angry one. And the one that disses Interpol. A

"Words and Guitar" popped up on satellite radio, and my daughter, 7, in the backseat, chimed in that it sounded like the same people who sing "Rock Lobster."

She's right, of course.

Was there really an Interpol dis song on The Woods?

Interpol Suck My Cock iirc

AKA "Entertain":

That’s why I think the White Stripes are a million times better than Interpol. The White Stripes made it feel brand new, even though it was blues riffs, you know? But Interpol just makes me think that Ian Curtis should be getting royalties. There’s that line [on The Woods’ "Entertain"] ‘You come around sounding 1972/Where’s the black and blue?’ Where’s the essence of it?

http://bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/top/documents/04711386.asp

1972? Black and blue? Why 1972? What does that have to do with Interpol? If anything, it scans like a White Stripes dis.

what if they'd written a happy song about the white stripes making rock new again instead

drums + guitar, they got it

Maybe she meant 1982?

I don't know JD's timeline so nm.

Nothing rhymes well with JD's timeline ('77-'80).

"you come around sounding so masturbatey/ I wish it was you that died in 1980"

Xgau has always been skeptical of repackaging of product, including in live form, but I would understand that tweet as a typically-barbed request, and not, it should already be completely obvious, any sort of attack on the band's prior output.

"1972? Black and blue? Why 1972? What does that have to do with Interpol? If anything, it scans like a White Stripes dis."

I always think Strokes, but that's probably not who they meant.

""Words and Guitar" popped up on satellite radio, and my daughter, 7, in the backseat, chimed in that it sounded like the same people who sing "Rock Lobster.""

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRIAA2bl1OI

Xgau has always been skeptical of repackaging of product, including in live form,

He's always been pretty lukewarm about live albums, for some reason.

And on the subject of live albums, remastering, shmemastering -- S-K should've put out a live record!

typically-barbed request? Haven't seen these. Examples?
Just took it as curiosity x seeking stimulating useful responses (might incl. barbed)

And on the subject of live albums, remastering, shmemastering -- S-K should've put out a live record!

The last gig would've been nice.

uh..

http://pitchfork.com/news/57126-sleater-kinney-possibly-releasing-new-music-box-set-includes-mysterious-7/

Vinyl boxset only?

Long lost rarity or newly recorded????

oh dammmmmmmmmmmmmm!

https://www.clearvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/what-the-what.gif

it'll be on youtube in 24 hours

Cover art for No Cities To Love, the new something, is up: http://www.wonderingsound.com/news/sleater-kinney-release-new-music/

Again I say oh dammmmmmmmmmmmmm!

If this is a new ~album~, how was news of such a reunion not already leaked???

Portlandia exists solely as a method of distraction.

THAT TIME CORIN GUEST-STARRED! IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

a whole new album would be insane

If Beyoncé could pull it off, so could S-K.

could def imagine them covering 'pretty hurts'

http://wp-images.emusic.com/assets/2014/10/photo-1.jpg

If you go back to the Pitchfork link now, they've embedded an instagram video from Stereogum with an audio clip of "Bury Your Friends" and it sounds like a good song in as much as you can tell from just a few seconds of it.

can I just? AAAAAAAH

Head explode.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/641/298/448.jpg

^^ It's full of a whole bucket of stars.

rxgau again:

OK, that email address for Sleater-Kinney now is: Rxgau_Billbo✧✧✧@ya✧✧✧.c✧✧. Any purchaser want to chat about the box, it's my next Pop Art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7flldNGy34

full version of the new song uploaded! :D

Sounds great. Please, someone, keep them away from Danger Mouse.

Sounds pretty solid to me

New alb, tour, can dl single:
http://pitchfork.com/news/57108-sleater-kinney-return-new-album-no-cities-to-love-2015-tour-bury-our-friends-lyric-video/

!

Oh snap. I watched their penultimate show from the side of the stage here and my feeling then was, man, this band has so much more to offer. Belated, but I'll take the return.

Seriously. . . does the world need ONE MORE S-K album?

If the other nine songs are as good as Bury Your Friends, then the answer is yes.

Tracklist and tour dates from P-fork:

No Cities to Love:
01 Price Tag
02 Fangless
03 Surface Envy
04 No Cities to Love
05 A New Wave
06 No Anthems
07 Gimme Love
08 Bury Our Friends
09 Hey Darling
10 Fade
Sleater-Kinney:
02-08 Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory Spokane
02-09 Boise, ID - Knitting Factory Boise
02-10 Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot
02-12 Denver, CO - Ogden Theater
02-13 Omaha, NE - Slowdown
02-14 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
02-15 Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall
02-17 Chicago, IL - Riviera
02-22 Boston, MA - House of Blues
02-24 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
02-26 New York, NY - Terminal 5
02-28 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
03-01 Pittsburgh, PA - Stage AE
03-18 Berlin, Germany - Postbahnhof
03-19 Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Paradiso
03-20 Paris, France - Cigale
03-21 Antwerp, Belgium - Trix
03-23 London, England - Roundhouse
03-24 Manchester, England - Albert Hall
03-25 Glasgow, Scotland - O2 ABC
03-26 Dublin, Ireland - Vicar Street

fuck you S-K for making me want to go to Terminal 5

Who said it's just going to be one more album? The fact that they bothered to record another album when they could have just reunited and toured indicates the creative juices are flowing. I dunno if we'll get another tour/record/tour cycle, but I bet/hope they keep releasing new stuff, in some form.

I heard whispers about this several months ago but the tru feelings of ecstatic joy didn't hit me til today

No Cleveland date, of course, since nobody ever comes here anymore, so I'll do either Pittsburgh or Chicago. (Or DC, maybe, since I still have a lot of friends down there I'd like to see.)

Terminal 5 sucks but I would still go see SK even if they were playing at the bottom of the East River.

kinda refreshing to see a reunited band book a bunch of the same-sized venues they were playing before instead of going straight for the festival payday

Prepon
@prepxn
“@Carrie_Rachel: woke up 2 news my band #sleaterkinney back together & that we have new record coming.” No,sorry

xp the London venue is approx 3x the size of venues they were playing before fwiw

ah maybe the European venues they're hitting are bigger. but like, the 9:30 Club, they were selling out multiple nights at that place for ages, they could easily play bigger rooms in D.C.

@Sleater_Kinney
Not to worry, additional tour dates will be announced soon! #sleaterkinney

There's only so much touring they can do without interrupting Portlandia's shooting schedule, right?

Maybe the entire season will take place on the bus?

As someone who lives near Spokane I find it sort of awesome and hilarious that their first show back will be there. I can't believe that there won't be some Portland or Seattle shows prior to that.

YOU GUYS

:D :D :D

Seriously. . . does the world need ONE MORE S-K album?

― i blow goat farts, aka garts for a living (waterface), Monday, October 20, 2014 9:39 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If the other nine songs are as good as Bury Your Friends, then the answer is yes.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, October 20, 2014 9:41 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

JF OTMFM. Listening to this now, and it easily would've made my poll ballot. That opening riff is just so fantastic; I can't think of anything else in their catalog that swings like that.

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Won't be able to sleep till the California dates are announced.

the world needs like three more SK albums, waterface.

Surely this'll be the exception to the "Don't Wear a Band's T-Shirt to Their Gigs" rule, right??

New song is great! And so instantly sounds like S-K rather than Wild Flag or the Corin Tucker Band or their other things.

My wife ordered the box set, UPS just delivered it, personally sent by the singer from Mudhoney:

http://i.imgur.com/1ZUd8ar.jpg?2

Touch Me, I Ship

haha

new song is awesome.
one of the more better things they done imo.

WTF? Mudhoney put an album out last year:http://www.allmusic.com/album/vanishing-point-mw0002487014

In all seriousness, I think Arm has had a day job at Sub Pop for good long time now.

he is the warehouse manager there..

Yeah I remember reading that somewhere, I just think it's funny to personalize the return shipping label like that.

There's only so much touring they can do without interrupting Portlandia's shooting schedule, right?

― Johnny Fever, Monday, October 20, 2014 11:25 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boy...what a...shame...that would be.......

I'm not saying I care (I don't), but the success of that show has surely levied certain expectations on Carrie's time.

I just opened my copy of Start Together. It's beautiful. The nicest box set I've purchased.

TIL Carrie has "DIG ME OUT" tattooed on her rib cage.

It's been bugging me all day, but I finally figured out what the main riff in "Bury Your Friends" reminds me of: "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)."

re: Carrie's acting career, she's also a recurring actor on Transparent and was/is working on the new Todd Haynes movie.

just got two tickets via presale; trying not to lose my chill

yeah, I just got two for the Pittsburgh show.

Tickets acquired for twin cities

It's been bugging me all day, but I finally figured out what the main riff in "Bury Your Friends" reminds me of: "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)."

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, October 21, 2014 3:36 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes!

Christgau:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6289241/sleater-kinney-material-girls?mobile_redirection=false

There's only so much touring they can do without interrupting Portlandia's shooting schedule, right?

― Johnny Fever, Monday, October 20, 2014 11:25 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boy...what a...shame...that would be.......

― some dude, Monday, October 20, 2014 5:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fred was a full time SNL cast member when Portlandia started and Carrie toured w/Wild Flag when it was going

thank god for modern air travel

and calendaring / assistants

Spokane show apparently has sold out 3 minutes in, I didn't get page to load until 4. I'm wondering if everyone in Portland and Seattle were trying to get tickets? Venue starts selling them on Friday so who knows.

Their official site still has an order button for the Feb 8. Spokane show.

maybe SEA/PDX (and god knows where else if ppl are thinking of flying in for the first show) + secondary market scum = quick sellout in Spokane. because while Spokane is a nice place, it's not exactly a "sell out the S-K show in three minutes" town, right?

i just went to the Knitting Factory site and it says tix aren't even on sale yet and won't be till 10 a.m. Pacific, which it obviously is.

i know ppl got Replacements in MPLS tix like 90 minutes after being told they were gone. you should keep trying if you have the time/patience.

Their official site still has an order button for the Feb 8. Spokane show.

― My Life with the Thrillho Kult (Leee), Tuesday, October 21, 2014 10:05 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol not anymore.

mmmyeah, it's possible i have no idea what i'm talking about xpost

THIS IS THE 3RD OVER-HYPED ARTICLE THAT I'VE SEEN ABOUT THIS BAND WITHIN THE LAST TWO DAYS. Frankly, I personally have keep abreast of Pop & Rock music since the late-1960s (and that CERTAINLY would include the 1990s) and I have NO IDEA who this band is. Can anyone reading my "comment" here please name SOME SONG for-which this Sleater-Kinney band might actually be KNOWN. By the way -, may I opine that if (for instance) a band simply had an occasional appearance on MTV's "120 Minutes" program way-back-when in the `90s -, THAT circumstance wouldn't and doesn't constitute being "well-known" (... and considering all of the hyperbole contained in these articles, I would EXPECT that they WERE supposed to have been "well-known, at SOME point in the past).

Hoping for the Philly show I think. Friends are going to that over NYC plus T5 sucks.

Where's that from?

that guy's a prize. re daft punk:

I guess that one observation about this song "Be Lucky", is that it does sound somewhat "derivative" of The Who's earlier material.
~ HOWEVER -, other than that minor shortcoming -, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED this song from the opening chords ! It's music and lyrics are "catchy". The music has lots of "pop" "energy". Simply put -, it "KICKS ASS" !
~ Every-now-and-then it will occur to me, "I wonder what it would sound like if we had musicians who would capitalize on the marvelous digital-recording capabilities of the modern era -, and yet STILL make INSPIRING Rock music, like bands did during the 1970s ?" Well -, HERE IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE !!
~ TO THINK -, that a couple of guys around the age of SEVENTY -, that were the "stars" of the ORIGINAL Woodstock Festival -, can "put to shame" 90% of the other Rock that gets made these days. There again, I'm not sure if that is so-much a compliment to The Who, or just a sad commentary the state of contemporary Rock music. ... what meager "real Rock" that gets made these days, anyway.

Haha, that reminds me of Jeffrey Wells' comments about the Big Star doc. ( . . . these CHARLIE NOBODIES . . .)

i assumed it was Rosie O'Donnell xp

the lefsetz is strong in this one

^^Which reminds me...http://ludostories.com/2013/07/29/my-night-with-the-sleater-kinney-masturbator/

new song didn't do much for me :/

"kinda refreshing to see a reunited band book a bunch of the same-sized venues they were playing before instead of going straight for the festival payday"

well, they're pretty clearly playing Coachella (over that Boise fest I'm assuming) and, probably, Sasquatch (after some NW shows, perhaps) and maybe others to follow. and Terminal 5 is bigger than any NYC club I remember them playing.

and good for them. is there a reason the best (rock) band in the world (or US, among their age cohort, whatever) shouldn't get paid accordingly?

LOL @ Lefsetz. That he has no idea who SK is says it all about him.

Oh, and this is great and all obv, but what ever happened to that Carrie/Peter Buck/Scott McCaughey PNW supergroup? That would rule.

i'm not begrudging the festival payday at all. but it seems like there have been a lot of groups reuniting/returning from hiatus the last few years who do only festivals, or do a bunch of festivals before any club/theater gigs, and it always seemed like such a clear decision to prioritize profit over giving the diehard fans the headlining sets they've been waiting X years for.

More like only festivals can dangle the cash it takes to get these bands to reunite. Does piss me off when the only way to see the Replacements or Outkast or whomever is to pay for a festival ticket. It's sort of like being made to buy a crappy burger to get the awesome fries.

The last place S-K played here, after they announced the end of was nigh, was Lollapalooza, fwiw.

There's also the fact that they're putting out a new record before the tour which feels more admirable than coasting totally on nostalgia

I only ever saw them as an opener for Pearl Jam, but they got pretty close to a full-hour set iirc.

Saw them four times, once opening for PJ in April 2003, which did not go over well with the crowd. The open air amphitheater acoustics were hell on their dynamic too.

Not even one Canadian date. Sigh.

They've already said more dates are coming. This is just the first leg.

Glasgow tickets bought. Saw them at Leeds Festival after 'The Woods' came out and thought they were great, much more powerful than I'd expected based on the records (pre-'The Woods'). Hadn't expected the way they played off each other, they were tight but the songs didn't feel rigid.

Yeah they were a fantastic live band, and I expect they will be again.

Just got tickets for Glasgow. Saw them myself just post-The Woods at Oran Mor and they were fucking amazing. So psyched to see them again.

Xgau on box & group's appeal, pretty apt:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6289241/sleater-kinney-material-girls

I posted it upthread. It's def worth a read.

Janet's one of the best live drummers I've seen.

It's a sad day when there's an it's/its mistake in a Christgau column. Not his fault, I'm sure, but still.

Finally listening to the new song. Rocked. Very One Beat but the Zep-ness of the front riff and general fullness of the sound is very Woods. Totally stoked, I'll buy this album.

thread title should be changed to Sleater-Kinney un-breaks up

I like S-K fine but their records sound like shit, especially the last one. Brick-walled to hell.

yeah the Woods sounds like ass

It's weird, because it's *supposed* to sound like that, you know? Most of the things I think sound terrible probably were put out by people who wished they sounded different than they do. (I actually kind of like the in-the-red-ness of The Woods).

Anyway - tickets now bought for the London show!

Distorted, "it's totally in my face!"-production is one thing; brickwalled mastering is quite another. They could have still achieved the former without it being ruined by the latter.

yeah i don't doubt it's purposeful (the mastering), i mean i'm sure they used a pro and i'm sure he knew it was slammed to hell

i brickwalled a mastering job in one of my bands once, and it's kind of initially "exciting" and makes other approaches seem staid, then the guy advised that we live with it for a couple weeks and we realized it was completely tiring

that guy's a prize. re daft punk:

I guess that one observation about this song "Be Lucky", is that it does sound somewhat "derivative" of The Who's earlier material.
~ HOWEVER -, other than that minor shortcoming -, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED this song from the opening chords ! It's music and lyrics are "catchy". The music has lots of "pop" "energy". Simply put -, it "KICKS ASS" !
~ Every-now-and-then it will occur to me, "I wonder what it would sound like if we had musicians who would capitalize on the marvelous digital-recording capabilities of the modern era -, and yet STILL make INSPIRING Rock music, like bands did during the 1970s ?" Well -, HERE IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE !!
~ TO THINK -, that a couple of guys around the age of SEVENTY -, that were the "stars" of the ORIGINAL Woodstock Festival -, can "put to shame" 90% of the other Rock that gets made these days. There again, I'm not sure if that is so-much a compliment to The Who, or just a sad commentary the state of contemporary Rock music. ... what meager "real Rock" that gets made these days, anyway.

fyi he's talking about a new Who song called "Be Lucky," not Daft Punk

I despise Lefsetz and everything he represents.

But I like that Who song, and I kind of hope S-K opens some shows on the Who tour (and I'm fully aware that I may be the only person hoping for this, aside from Carrie Brownstein).

yeah i don't doubt it's purposeful (the mastering), i mean i'm sure they used a pro and i'm sure he knew it was slammed to hell

i brickwalled a mastering job in one of my bands once, and it's kind of initially "exciting" and makes other approaches seem staid, then the guy advised that we live with it for a couple weeks and we realized it was completely tiring

― u2 removal machine (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 24, 2014 10:27 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've always found "The Fox" to be notably a bit tiring production-wise but the rest of the record didn't bother me quite as much in this way.

xxp lol yeah I meant to say re: the who, crossed my signals when typing bc of the daft punk headline

Re mastering and re-mastering, Xgau compares in the piece linked upthread, likes the changes.

damn is the terminal 5 show sold out through presale? went on ticketmaster at noon sharp and no dice so far

fuck a presale for real tho

No 10s in that PFM reappraisal?

Got tickets for Philly. Excited to not have to deal with T5.

fuck it on a whim i just got tickets

Finally got tickets, think it sold out in 15 minutes this time.

no tickets :(

I'm sure people overbought- I'm sure someone will be trying to get rid of a few in the meantime.

No California dates. :(

They promised to add dates! Did that already happen?

Obvious Coachella (and more, very likely) is obvious

No Southern dates at all, although that doesn't rule out a second leg built around Bonaroo or ACL fest later this year.

I mean, later NEXT year.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/three-hard-way-return-sleater-kinney

stopped reading at

As in Susan Sontag’s appalling statement, before anyone had claimed responsibility, that 9/11 was the result of “specific American alliances and actions” (none specific enough for Sontag to actually mention),

As did I.

Be glad you both missed the next sentence, then.

omg

have never been able to shake the feeling that this band was strictly for people who missed the first wave of riot grrl bands

Be glad you both missed the next sentence, then.

― Οὖτις Δαυ & τηε Κνιγητσ (Phil D.), Wednesday, November 12, 2014 3:47 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just read it. Holy shit. Fuck that fucking guy.

yeah editor should have flagged that as totally unnecessary

lol sorry guys, i posted that before reading beyond the first few paragraphs

also failed to notice the byline which should have alerted me that what initially appeared to be a pleasant celebration of a band i like would inevitably devolve into random toxic potshots from a notorious crank

Yeah, Geez dude.

This bit was good, articulating how it felt getting introduced to their music:

But fuck goodness and decency. Sleater-Kinney was one of those things that sometimes happens in rock ’n’ roll when you are shaken to the core by a band or by a song the moment you hear it because, you suddenly realize, you have always wanted to hear this very thing, even if such a thing were previously unimaginable.

^^Dude=Taylor

really feel like S-K as a band inspires that kind of drivel--not that it's their fault but Cheesy Rice do people freak out over them

have never been able to shake the feeling that this band was strictly for people who missed the first wave of riot grrl bands
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, November 12, 2014 2:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lmao paternalistic bullshit

I like S-K better than most of the first wave of RG, tbh. They always reminded me of Fugazi, super-tight arrangements, awesome hooks. I think every time I saw them live I left thinking how lucky we all were to have them.

What, say, The Hot Rock or The Woods has to do with Bikini Kill I have no idea

they're women duh

but then i didn't need first wave riot girl either cuz i'd already heard heart

never been able to shake the feeling that cat power was for ppl who'd missed out on suzi quattro

One Beat bit aside (and he does try "to be fair," but goes on awhile), seems like most of this is right-on testimonial: if I'd never heard S-K, would do so after or while reading, and not be disappointed. If you write up front political lyrics, expect pushback (suspect they did, though some musos seem all amazed)

i've never been able to shake the feeling that neko case was for ppl who'd missed out on amelia earhart

no denying Julia Holter is for ppl who'd missed out on Hildegard of Bingen

Earhart? Meh after the girl on the White Rock bottle (she's already *there,* flygirl).

Sleater-Kinney boxed sets are certainly for people who missed out on Sleater-Kinney.

Mary Magdalene, get your ticket from Lilith.

can't say I share Shakey's opinion on this one but given that S-K were borne out of the tail end of riot grrrl's first wave I think the heavy-handed clink-y satire in response is a bit misplaced

I didn't say my feeling was justified btw. although when I read things like "Sleater-Kinney was one of those things that sometimes happens in rock ’n’ roll when you are shaken to the core by a band or by a song the moment you hear it because, you suddenly realize, you have always wanted to hear this very thing, even if such a thing were previously unimaginable" I suspect in some cases it is.

I am not overly familiar with their ouevre. I heard their first album when it came out and saw them play live maybe a couple years later where I was accosted by a v drunk punk girl who yelled at me for not dancing (she then dragged another friend of mine into the pit where she subsequently punched somebody and got thrown out). idk I just didn't respond to them.

many xp

that's an example of Taylor's hyperbolic writing (drenched in Kael). I'm pretty sure he'd heard Essential Logic.

I'm glad some of you guys are excited about having a totally ahistorical position on where the band came from though, nicely done. asserting that I was associating them with riot grrl simply because they're women is p fuckin stupid.

I do kind of wonder if the press at the time would've made space for S-K without Bikini Kill going into "media blackout" around the same time that S-K's first album came out. It felt like the rock press was like "well, we can't right about those angry punk women anymore OH LOOK these ladies fit the bill perfectly!" (and conveniently happen to be less confrontational/more willing to make standard industry moves)

xp

again I'm not knocking the band, they're fine whatever. but when people hyperventilate about them like they are THE GREATEST WOMEN IN ROCK EVER and unlike anything that came before I get kinda uhhhhh

can't right? wtf can't write

Yes sk is related to riot girl, but i would say suggesting that sk is old hat if you've heard bikini kill is pretty fuckin stupid too

"Im not saying ALL women are the same geez just women of that age and social background!"

"well, we can't right about those angry punk women anymore OH LOOK these ladies fit the bill perfectly!" (and conveniently happen to be less confrontational/more willing to make standard industry moves)

xp

― Οὖτις, Thursday, November 13, 2014 10:56 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag

yes...how "convenient" for them *strokes beard*

http://www.jeremybrett.info/forum/images/smilies/sh.gif

dude croup give it up you are smarter than this

Sleater Kinney is certainly more accessible than most riot grrrl associated acts out there. Does that clear anything up?

lol shakey who's the one getting shit here? you made a glib statement based on minimal information (as you explained in defensive detail afterwards), people unsympathetically made fun of you for it. deaaaalll

there's definitely a lot of hype around s-k and i'd say it was all downhill after dig me out, but if you genuinely don't know what makes them different than first wave riot girl read one of the umpteen musical appreciations of them from writers who've heard it all.

I'm fine w it but it would be cool if you could stop pretending like S-K bears no relation to riot grrl beyond white members with boobs, which is just disingenuous and wasn't what I was saying at all and you know it

xp

would also be nice to bear in mind that this was all in the context of that Taylor piece which is full of bullshit (literally writing as if he had never heard angry women w guitars before) and is what prompted my post in the first place

yeah yeah somebody said some dumb shit so you said some dumb shit (have never been able to shake the feeling that this band was strictly for people who missed the first wave of riot grrl bands - it's the "strictly" that really did you in) and people got mean

again, deaaaaaalllll

do you not have an emoticon/anigif to go along w that

i can find you a "damn kids" one if you like

again I'm not knocking the band, they're fine whatever. but when people hyperventilate about them like they are THE GREATEST WOMEN IN ROCK EVER and unlike anything that came before I get kinda uhhhhh

― Οὖτις, Thursday, November 13, 2014 4:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So fucking true. Get over it everyone

"Combat Rock" really was pretty bad.

"Light Rail Coyote" made up for it though.

"Combat Rock" was my #1 for the ILX poll. I regret nothing.

It's like, I get why people dig 'em but Jesus Christ people cool it with the hyperbole

yeah "combat rock" is my favorite song on one beat

some of the lyrics on 'one beat' are so strident and un-subtle that they're weird to hear now. the context matters of course but even at the time i kind of cringed at a lot of 'combat rock.' not that i remotely agree with taylor, who's basically a smarmy centrist clintonoid jerk, salon was full of them in the early '00s.

Combat Rock is so freaking corny.

corin's delivery redeems some of it, but ugh @ this verse especially:

They tell us there are only two sides to be on
If you are on our side you're right, if not you're wrong
But are we innocent, pargons of good?
Is our guilt erased by the pain that we've endured?

One Beat was my favorite album of 2002 and have had no problem revisiting it but I think my ranking it so high has to do with watching them live twice that season and those songs sounded HUGE.

when it came out i only liked "step aside," "oh" and "o2". last i checked i only liked "step aside" and "oh".

always surprised to see the song lengths are consistently under four minutes, though the trick is they used to do so much in three

excitement about that new song died fast, didn't it

might have more going on lyrically that i grasped but musically it felt all too aligned with brownstein saying the white stripes made her believe in rock again

than i grasped

Nope. The new song is still fucking hot.

do you like jack white solo albums

I love the new song, and never liked Jack White/White Stripes.

huh cool

I think further enthusiasm is being held until more material surfaces. Listening again to "Bury Our Friends", and there is so much more going on there than your average White Stripes/Jack joint.

FWIW, the official video for the new song has earned over 344,000 views on Youtube since it was posted a little over three weeks ago. This is a higher view count than the official "Entertain" video has got, and that one's been up since 2006. The clips for "Jumpers" & "Modern Girl" are both in the 500k range after also being up since 2005/6.

i'll admit to some confirmation bias

S/K past the first album or two don't really share that much sonic territory with riot grrl, and saying some of their press was because riot grrl happened is sorta odd to me.... not that there's no truth to it in terms of a literal history of what journalists might have been looking for or narratives they might have (lazily or otherwise) slotted coverage into. But a) who cares, the band rules b) "oh sure but who would pay attention to the ROLLING STONES if the press hadn't hyped everybody on THE BEATLES" c) wouldn't that just be a marker of success (in one narrow area) of riot grrl, that this band reaches a wider audience than it might have otherwise...? i mean not saying that "convert journalists to like girl bands" was a party platform item, but the idea of a whole huge swath of people forming a really dedicated personal relationship with this band that sang about themes not found in other bands seems kinda like...not a problem?

this band that sang about themes not found in other bands

yeah see uh

I mean it's not a problem but that just isn't true

But but but...

I am not overly familiar with their ouevre. I heard their first album when it came out and saw them play live maybe a couple years later where I was accosted by a v drunk punk girl who yelled at me for not dancing (she then dragged another friend of mine into the pit where she subsequently punched somebody and got thrown out). idk I just didn't respond to them.

many xp

― Οὖτις, Thursday, November 13, 2014 10:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw (I had to check their discography) and yeah I heard everything up through Call the Doctor apparently. Granted I haven't listened since.

but do tell what themes they explored that no other band did, that seems like a p broad claim to make

for real I wouldn't make that claim about *any* band

yeah I heard everything up through Call the Doctor apparently

So all of two albums.

Still no additional west coast dates. :\

gonna say it again, if you want to know what's so great about a band you haven't heard since 1996, read an article by someone you respect written in the nearly 20 years between

maybe even put the album they're talking about on spotify while you do it

spotiwhatnow

I didn't mean to make that as strong a claim as it came out actually. Just noting that a lot of people's relationships with this band did include a "I recognize these people, they're singing about my life and things I've struggled with etc, that I am not hearing in other music." If you want to say that that content is just warmed-over riot grrl, and that all those people, if they had only known Bratmobile, would have dropped Sleater-Kinney like a hot potato, that just seems kind of uncharitable to those listeners as well as to the bands. I also can't tell here if we're talking about the kind of people I knew who loved Sleater-Kinney, or some strawman indie rock fan who adopted S-K but not other members of the scene from which they emerged...

But let's say the themes were 100% exactly the same (I would not agree btw)... the music's still pretty fucking different, which should matter in terms of why listeners might dig a band. The Hot Rock does not sound like a "first-wave riot grrl band" (do these constitute one unitary sound/approach? I wouldn't say so)... certainly not much like S-K's debut even. Even the super hooky direct pop-rock aspects of Dig Me Out (dum dum do do do dum dum de dum yeah!) chart a different map IMO. If the sonic similarities to you are closest to riot grrl, there'd be plenty of ways to back that up given their own roots in that scene (Excuse 17, Heavens to Betsy) but there's enough other shit going on in what they do, that just saying they're the same thing, part two, makes it seem like you don't know the music and are comfortable slotting all 90s female-led bands together in the absence of another narrative.

It also oddly cuts them off from their mid-to-late-90s peer acts even within the riot-grrl map. If the world was really just waiting for this re-do, you'd think Team Dresch and the Butchies would have been as big as Sleater-Kinney. Not dissing either of those acts - there's lots of reasons for that circumstance - but surely one is that all these bands actually made different music.

sorry I meant Dig Me Out ha the one that looked like the Kinks album

xpp

sorry mods please change the 1996 in my post to 1997

(missing comment in my above post - the kind of people I knew who loved Sleater-Kinney were also into a lot of riot grrl bands of whatever "wave," in addition to many other kinds of music also)

If you want to say that that content is just warmed-over riot grrl, and that all those people, if they had only known Bratmobile, would have dropped Sleater-Kinney like a hot potato, that just seems kind of uncharitable to those listeners as well as to the bands. I also can't tell here if we're talking about the kind of people I knew who loved Sleater-Kinney

1) I wouldn't go so far as to call it warmed-over, they were part of that scene, I see them as part of that continuum, I don't think they were a corporate sell-out version of Bratmobile or something BUT 2) maybe we're talking about the kind of people that *I* knew who went apeshit for S-K at the time; many of who, for some reason really did not have any awareness or interest in the earlier scene/bands that spawned them, which I always thought was weird. I had friends who would not have given Bikini Kill or Team Dresch the time of day (too strident, or too poorly recorded, or too obscure idk) but then they found S-K and would do some embarrassing "GIRLS ROCK! I HAD NO IDEA!" schtick and it bugged me.

so says the grumpy old man about kids these days or back then or uh something

now see if you'd just said "man s-k has some overzealous fans, lemme tell you about this time in '97..." nobody woulda blinked

maybe we're talking about the kind of people that *I* knew who went apeshit for S-K at the time; many of who, for some reason really did not have any awareness or interest in the earlier scene/bands that spawned them, which I always thought was weird.

Maybe your friends preferred S-K to the other bands...?

xxxpost Huh, okay, well, I can at least see where you're coming from there. I was in a women's studies crowd and so Le Tigre was actually my gateway drug to almost all this music at the same time.... though I remember having an aha! moment when I realized this was the same Hot Rock that Addicted To Noise had been raving about a couple years before, and my actual first real S-K encounter was a little before I fell in with that crowd, and bought All Hands on the basis of the "Rock n Roll Fun" video. So in that sense maybe I am who you're talking about - college freshman in 2000, Bikini Kill et al totally off my radar, but who's this rockin' band???! I definitely don't remember being stunned that girls rocked, though. The thing is they're a really good band!

like my crew of friends/relatives/acquaintances who were dialed into the Oly scene always seemed a little surprised/befuddled that S-K was the band that really blew up in the wake of riot grrrl, that they were the ones that got indie rock guys all excited. Prior to them riot grrl bands seemed to appeal pretty exclusively to punk girls, the punk LGBT community, and the relatively small number of northwest punk straight dudes who weren't scared off/intimidated by it. But S-K's success erased that boundary, they were the "crossover" act, for lack of a better term.

xp

frankly i wouldn't expect people dialed into the oly scene to understand what kind of band would blow up. their definition of "pop" has proven a bit askew.

like in hype where eddie vedder acts all befuddled that the success of pearl jam led to the success of candlebox rather than the success of the fastbacks

s-k wasn't just in the continuum of riot grrrl, they were a riot grrrl SUPERGROUP featuring members of heavens to betsy and excuse 17. which doesn't change what a crock of shit "strictly for folks who missed the bus" is.

like my crew of friends/relatives/acquaintances who were dialed into the Oly scene always seemed a little surprised/befuddled that S-K was the band that really blew up in the wake of riot grrrl, that they were the ones that got indie rock guys all excited. Prior to them riot grrl bands seemed to appeal pretty exclusively to punk girls, the punk LGBT community, and the relatively small number of northwest punk straight dudes who weren't scared off/intimidated by it. But S-K's success erased that boundary, they were the "crossover" act, for lack of a better term.

xp

― Οὖτις, Thursday, November 13, 2014 5:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See that's at least a story I can understand - but is being a crossover act the same as being the band "for" people who "missed" the other thing? Presumably you cross over in part because you do something different. I would not dispute, for example, that S-K are sonically less of a punk band and more ready to rock the indie rockers. Carrie Brownstein, I was just shocked to learn from Wikipedia, got her teenage guitar lessons from Jeremy Enigk! So in that case, it's not really surprising that some people would like them and not the "first wave," even when exposed to both. If that's the claim you're making I'll stop beating up on the "for people who missed" story.

full disclosure here, I was in college when this stuff started to burble up, cousin working distro at K, older bro connecting me to 'zine scene and sending me Huggybear tapes etc. But I can count the number of immediate peers (even the women's studies/radical lesbians!) that I knew who were interested on one hand (granted this was Santa Cruz, not really a punk hotbed). 5 years later my roommates are bringing home Dig Me Out like it came out of nowhere and S-K is playing the Fillmore. It was weird.

like in hype where eddie vedder acts all befuddled that the success of pearl jam led to the success of candlebox rather than the success of the fastbacks

ha fair enuf

xxp

Also, do check this thread's early posts, which include plenty of ilxors passionately declaiming why this band struck them as special, describing what they liked about them, etc. There's of course some backlash and hateorade but it's a good capsule... if naturally colored by the circumstances and by hindsight since ILX didn't exist for the first half of Sleater-Kinney's career.

i mean, the shit one could throw at s-k re being a little more mainstream-rock-minded than their peers and immediate elders you could throw at husker du and nirvana - every indie-ish group that got big has a) buckets of nonsensical hype and b) a community they grew out of

"rem, shit man that's strictly for folks who missed out on the dbs...i dunno i didn't hear anything after reckoning. man there was is asshole in college..."

is being a crossover act the same as being the band "for" people who "missed" the other thing?

this is just my crusty aging hipster obsession-with-lineage crankiness but when people who "missed" the other thing claim the crossover act was groundbreaking (for whatever reason) while ignoring those who came before yeah I get annoyed. Like, just be honest and maybe say that you liked that they packaged something you hadn't heard before in a way that slotted into familiar rock conventions (as opposed to being too abrasive or challenging or hard to find or shittily recorded); but let's not pretend they were the first angry women to play guitars and write about lesbian relationships or whatever because they weren't. They might have been the first to do that in a way that incorporated classic rock sonics and traditionalist pop songwriting structures, hell maybe they are just better songwriters than Team Dresch period, but that is a different thing.

xp

the other caveat with rereading this thread, get ready for a long though sometimes entertaining derail concerning whether indie bands are understood canonically as progressing from greatness to decadent irrelevance or the other way around...oof....

angry women, grr

just b/c sk came out of riot doesn't mean that from DMO onwards they stuck anything close to what you might consider a riot sound, nor that when they moved it was by incorporating "classic rock sonics and traditionalist pop songwriting structures"

but maybe if you listened to DMO or THR or whatever you could figure though out eh?

the shit one could throw at s-k re being a little more mainstream-rock-minded than their peers and immediate elders you could throw at husker du and nirvana

the thing is that at the time I never, not once, met anyone who would say "you know, Sleater-Kinney just writes better hooks than Bikini Kill, and that's why I love them." (And that was the real difference between, say, Nirvana and Mudhoney - Nirvana had hooks). It was always about a) how they were women and b) how they could really rock. which just seemed ahistorical, reductionist, sexist etc. idk maybe every local fan I knew at the time in this town was a moron (entirely possible).

xp

I guess I don't get the obsession with "first-ness," as if the reason why people liked them is because they thought they were first to something. "I've been such a fool, I love this band, but if I had known they were second, I would hate them!" And again, very little of what I heard around Sleater-Kinney was "they're groundbreaking," or "they're women...but they rock!," it was "they're awesome!" My points above about them hitting different notes than other bands wasn't to celebrate them for being pioneers but to just point out that people might like them more than other bands because they... were different from those other bands. But again maybe this makes more sense if you're dealing with some kind of "poseur/late-adopter" character where we assume their interest in the band is somehow insincere.... I dunno, this is why I think it's not charitable to those listeners, maybe they even said "groundbreaking" but meant "I love them," who knows.

I do think that trying to evaluate the band's achievement based on where they rank in being "angry women to play guitars and write about lesbian relationships" is kinda the exact thing you're getting slammed for a few posts back - because they come from riot grrl they can only get evaluated according to a one-dimensional version of what riot grrl is, and can be written off as not-different-enough-to-justify-getting-attention. But maybe I'm really misreading you.

"rebel girl" 7-inch aside, sleater-kinney wrote better hooks than bikini kill

now let the healing begin

"they're groundbreaking," or "they're women...but they rock!," it was "they're awesome!"

do you never ask people why...?

I scrolled upthread a bit but so far it's just a lot of kind of generic adulation ("best live band ever!"), which is fair, this is just an internet thread, not everything's got to have a detailed critical response. The only other points of reference I have are actual conversations I recall at the time. And this terrible Charles Taylor piece.

Firstness doesn't actually interest me, tbh. Real firsts are pretty rare, and not always great music in and of themselves (although sometimes they are). But when people claim groundbreaking I automatically think "what ground are you referring to".

gonna load the rest of the messages in this thread now

xp

It was always about a) how they were women and b) how they could really rock. which just seemed ahistorical, reductionist, sexist etc. idk maybe every local fan I knew at the time in this town was a moron (entirely possible).

The guys in front of us at the Pearl Jam show in 2003 when S-K opened who said "Who are the dikes?" were prob Bratmobile fans.

haha funnily enough I see the first in-depth post is actually from... Dr. Casino

xp

The only other points of reference I have are actual conversations I recall at the time. And this terrible Charles Taylor piece.

dude were you in a coma for 15 years?

i'm glad with your few points of reference that you didn't feel ashamed about forming a strong opinion nonetheless and generously sharing it with this thread

why is sleater-kinney notable for being 'angry', they seem pretty ecstatic and joyous to me most of the time.

yeah one of the things Taylor gets right is how transporting and fucking fun they were, esp live

sorry croup was paying attention to other stuff

xp

I did see some episodes of Portlandia. that one where Carrie is mad that the librarian doesn't know about Neu! is funny

i'd gone so long without thinking about those horrible, ahistorical sleater-kinney enthusiasts...and then that charles taylor essay...it brought it all back. how can you blame me for saying their fans were ding-a-lings who'd never heard bikini kill. HOW?

actually you know what only now remembering that in those 15 years I also saw them play some free show in Dolores Park during the Dubya years. they covered "Fortunate Son", which is always nice to hear people trot out.

wait memory fragments of the '00s are coming back? somebody call the doctor!

I'm old get me my pills

actually you know what only now remembering that in those 15 years I also saw them play some free show in Dolores Park during the Dubya years. they covered "Fortunate Son", which is always nice to hear people trot out.

words + guitar