Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't Hold - August 16th

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can we all finally admit Quasi >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYvlcw8pLso

If only Sam whatshisface didn't sing, perhaps.

irl lol Grisso

If you're talking about Carrie's nasally singing, she started that at least as far back as One Beat ("Oxygen" comes to mind), and I probably the beginnings of it on "The Size of Our Love."

Finally listened to the single, it's fucking fantastic, I love that bizarre trad rock reprisal at the end. this shit sounds so cool, thank u st. vincent

woof

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/arts/music/sleater-kinney-st-vincent.html?fbclid=IwAR2EDvvyAEvUXImRok8abBR78Ii6HBnI2xNvVPCYiy7kNWTT6N5iseaav0k

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sic does that every time he catches someone sharing a link from facebook. I'm giving him some good-natured shit about it.

I hear Carrie kept sharing links that way, and that's why Janet left the band.

Thought that one was less revealing than the Guardian piece from a week before with their difference places in life, etc..

I've been listening to All Hands and One Beat for the last week and the difference that's striking me most is the vocal mix, especially the latest song released where Carrie's singing just seems to be on top of everything else.

i'm a little surprised to hear how hands on Annie Clark was actually in that interview so I can see how that may have been kind of an unpleasant Yoko situation for Janet.

huh I thought it was incredibly revealing, unintentionally so

clark sounded like a member of the band

yeah, both in the piece and in the music

greil m. weighs in:

I hear a person who New York Times critics and herself have sold as the coolest person on earth. What I hear on the new material is: Wouldn’t you like to be like me?—not mentioning that she’s been an image from the start.
I have been an absolute fan of the band since they formed and I heard their first tracks (including their cover of “More than a Feeling”) and stood next to the stage when they first played San Francisco. I never liked everything they did: being a fan is knowing that to embrace poor work is to betray the band, not to mention oneself. What I hear so far is a producer stealing the voice of people better than she is so that she’ll still be appearing In the fashion pages when they’re no longer competition. I hope I’m completely wrong. I am prejudiced for the west over the east. But I’ve always thought St. Vincent was a fraud and I’m not hearing differently.

Greil like to call a lot of female musicians frauds

the NYT piece winking at materialism and fashion labels feels weird with this all-female group, idk

I don't care about this band (or St. Vincent) at all but that is an incredibly bad take. It second-guesses the relationship between Brownstein and Clark in a gross, presumptive way, rather than engaging with the work itself. And calling a band a "fraud", what does that even mean? That she didn't actually produce the record, or she doesn't make her own music or have her own ideas? lol

xp

not to mention recycling hoary (and incorrect) tropes priveleging "authenticity" (she's an "image", OH NO!) and ad hominem attacks ("oh the NYT critics like her and she obviously thinks she's SO smart! I better cut her down to size")

blech

the NYT piece winking at materialism and fashion labels feels weird with this all-female group, idk

https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqqvbnG6NT1ql2u8zo1_400.gif

idk why I'm reading this thread tbh, might be because I've always found ILM's collective pants-wetting over this band totally mystifying (see also: REM, Husker Du)

really like "The Center Won't Hold"

a metric source that gets thrown around here a lot, so...
monthly Spotify listeners
Sleater-Kinney: 370,000
St Vincent: about 1.5 million

I love both and I know SV is the bigger name these days, but that's a bit surprising given where SK are at in the promotion cycle.

Been avoiding the pre-release singles and most of the noise. Looking forward to hearing the album.

xp Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out were exciting to hear for the first time I thought

lol at outic acting like Sleater Kinney, REM, and Husker Du fandom is some quirk of ILM like taking Big & Rich seriously or something

xp also felt that way about Chronic Town, Murmur, Metal Circus, Zen Arcade, New Day Rising

if you go back to like 2004 era ILM i'm sure there were plenty of posts dismissive of SK in a "ew, girl bands are so lame!" kind of way

I mean, a lot of people say the job of a producer is to become a temporary band member.

They (in fact it was Janet, iirc) sought her out as a collaborator. If the record had been billed as "Sleater-Kinney / St. Vincent" or "Sleater-Kinney featuring St. Vincent" or "Sleat Kincent" there would likely be very little hand-wringing over what St. Vincent did, when, how, and why.

That Uncle Greil take is gross.

my goodness imagine what Brian Eno did to Talking Heads!

lol

What I hear so far is a producer stealing the voice of people better than she is so that she’ll still be appearing In the fashion pages when they’re no longer competition.

this is incredibly gross

Tina Weymouth stuck around and got in some excellent digs at Byrne and Eno, Janet should have stayed and done the same.

the yoko ono bullshit about Clark is lame. Another producer with another band comes on board and changes the sound and they wind up sparking their creativity. Or maybe it's a poor match. whatever the case, the band's agency remains. In this case she's brainwashed them and oh no the expensive accessorizing.

That sneaky Annie Clark, how dare she bring any of her own musical personality to the table

ve always found ILM's collective pants-wetting over this band totally mystifying

What a perfect metaphor to use for a female band, can I borrow it? Thanks!

The other Janet Weiss would have had something to say about that.

Greil Marcus is such a weirdo.

I looked up my first ilx post from 2002 because of that ilx anniversary thread and was a tad confused why I was a bit mean about him. Now I am remembering.

worst movie of the year

Greil like to call a lot of female musicians frauds

the NYT piece winking at materialism and fashion labels feels weird with this all-female group, idk

and it's not exactly a stretch to say they were pretty consistently against that kind of thing on album after album

oh noes a band figuring out how to sell/stream albums in the 2010s has to rethink its strategy!

i think it's a fair point to question for a band who were once pretty well defined by something other than strategizing market success

i just don't think coming up with a band image is really similar...even if they credit some people who also happen to own a fashion line.

also i guess i never thought of S-K's feminism as being against idk wearing certain types of clothes or crafting a consistent aesthetic. i'm really not sure what the extraneous bullshit surrounding this is supposed to signify. i just don't believe a male band would catch the same flak.

y'all are treating the marketing of the album as if it were commensurate with how it was created. The album might suck! But all you dudes are getting weird on me.

she played on it but had no creative input iirc

that's the one that made he quit on the whole st vincent deal

Lindsay Zoladz , NY Times critic in part on new album:

. The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band’s self-produced 2021 LP “Path of Wellness” and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort “The Center Won’t Hold.” But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band’s mightiest work, “Little Rope” sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.

The Center Won’t Hold was the album I wanted after No Cities to Love: a break from their sound. I still listen to it.

i can't stand it tbh

I hear ya.

okay on to the positive - "Say It Like You Mean It" - wow what a chorus (yr contractually obligated to refer to a chorus like this as "soaring"), incredible hook and melody

I'm intrigued by this one. It's kind of a bummer how their reputation basically collapsed after JW left (I think that break was possibly even more acrimonious than she let on in her occasional interviews on the subject), but they were too great to be dismissed based on that alone and i'm always ready to give them a chance.

this one doesn't have that feeling where you're trying to talk yourself into it or "oh isn't this an interesting direction" i just like it like it

yeah the album feels more natural, they don't appear to be trying to compensate for anything or really 'trying something new', it's just got a bunch of good songs.

saw them last night in SF at the Warfield (they are playing again tonight,but it was moved to the Regency because I think these two shows undersold). I didn't have high expectations even though I do like this album, mainly because the show I saw after Center was so underwhelming. But they were really good. It's obviously not 1999 anymore and I'm no longer 28 and neither are they, but this was as good as I could have hoped for.

the crowd was fucking annoying as shit though, I seem to have stood right in the area of a bunch of entitled babies. LIke when I came in, some guy actually grabbed my arm and moved me out of the way because I guess I blocked his view. I almost punched him. Later, near the end of the show, when I cautiously took out my camera to take a quick video, some lady grabbed me and said "I can't see a fucking thing if your phone is there" Ok yeah, that's been happening to me all night. She also grabbed my son when he walked by her and said "oh no girl, uh uh" because he briefly blocked her line of sight for four seconds. wtf is wrong with everyone.

yeah ppl dont know to be at shows anymore

when i was at margo price at the fillmore this woman was fully complaining that people were moving into her spot and i’m like it’s not yours, the crowd moves, so you do too, just fucking adjust and grow the fuck up