Sleater-Kinney breaks up

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