Sleater-Kinney breaks up

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

some xposts - Yah it's a big thread I admit, maybe the commentary isn't as precise as I was reading it as, I dunno. I didn't know those people who claimed "groundbreaking" so I can't really respond to them, my only point was always "different from other things I might otherwise be listening to" not "groundbreaking." Another good reference might be "I'm The Queen of Rock and POLL!!!!!!"_ILM Artist Poll #51_SLEATER-KINNEY_ RESULTS THREAD which produced results not really reducible to "riot grrl for those who missed it" or "riot grrl but totally different b/c added indie and classic rock." I dunno, they're a band, they had a sound, they had songs, people dug the sound and dug the songs, for reasons which have been articulated elsewhere.

They also were fucking tight as shit live, btw, and that tightness in turn let them attempt really cool things in the songwriting - the criss-crossing guitar and vocal parts, the two-guitars, no-bass thing in general, this sense that the songs could be continually spiralling down (or up) without getting there, really great for songs about emotional tension whether about a long ugly breakup or the sad vigil by a hospital bed. Janet Weiss's drumming obviously a huge part of this. I actually don't think they sound like many other bands and if anything I'd say your later math-rocky types owe them something (in addition to the usual post-punk and post-rock sources), though here I venture into territories of indie that I don't have a full grasp on, and anyway my point is that it doesn't matter whether they were first to anything. Blah blah blah, sorry, kinda talking in circles at this point. I like this band.

omg beloved band inspires critics / fans to react hyperbolically, another S-K first!

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

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Thursday, November 13, 2014 4:48 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why Sleater-Kinney when we already had The Go-Gos?

http://www.youtube.com/v/IiRJ64dscko%26fs=1%26hl=en

how can you blame me for saying their fans were ding-a-lings who'd never heard bikini kill. HOW?

Given the disparity in sales between Bikini Kill and S-K, definitely fair to say that a good number of S-K fans had never heard Bikini Kill. On the other hand, given that S-K themselves never really sold that many records, I think reducing their non-Bikini-Kill-hearing fans to ding-a-lings is less fair. They were a cult band even at their biggest, not something you just wandered into while looking for a Sheryl Crow CD.

Also, fwiw, I had heard Bikini Kill before I heard Sleater-Kinney, and I still liked Sleater-Kinney a lot more.

On Reddit in just under 90 minutes...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1901986_799306576795375_5327093098123334434_n.jpg?oh=97ba2703f9b6bbbac51b58862d17c804&oe=55153B98&__gda__=1426118565_4d58c9a39b812fafd99fca1d54d2d5e2

New song:

https://soundcloud.com/sleater-kinney/surface-envy

Sounds like S-K. Thumbs up.

Getting (more) excited!

Here's the reddit session: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o26rc/we_are_sleaterkinney_aua/?limit=500

[–]-Bathtub-Gin- 7 points an hour ago
What is an artist you've always wanted to cover, but haven't gotten the chance to?
permalink
[–]Sleater-Kinney[S] 15 points an hour ago
Devo.

Wow, the new song. Like they never left.

Half hour interview on NPR from a week or two ago: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/11/20/365464686/sleater-kinney-2-0-the-band-talks-about-its-first-album-in-10-years

haha Trapt - The Acoustic Collection is a real doozy from that AV Club least essential list

wrong thread! But yes, you are correct.

lol sorry sleater-kinney!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o26rc/we_are_sleaterkinney_aua/cmj1i17

^_^

SK will be on The Chris Gethard Show tonight. 11pm EST, streaming live here:

http://thechrisgethardshow.com/

New song rocks. It's like Judas Priest or something.

Got tickets for the Chicago show, totally psyched.