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Nearly 20 years ago, when Sleater-Kinney released its towering seventh album, \u201cThe Woods,\u201d there was a convincing case to be made that the trio was the most vital, and underrated, working American rock band.<\/p>\n
Born of the fervent feminist spirit of the riot grrrl movement and the Pacific Northwest\u2019s fertile D.I.Y. scene, the group spent the second half of the \u201990s releasing increasingly sophisticated punk albums and eventually, on its righteous 2002 release \u201cOne Beat,\u201d maturing into one of the few indie-rock bands making meaningful protest music in the aftermath of 9\/11.<\/p>\n
On \u201cThe Woods,\u201d Sleater-Kinney managed to kick things into an even higher gear. The twitchy electricity of Carrie Brownstein\u2019s guitar, the embodied howl of Corin Tucker\u2019s vocals and the earth-quaking force of Janet Weiss\u2019s drums collided in a glorious cacophony, making noise that sounded less like songs than melodic thunderstorms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
There are dim echoes of that fury on \u201cLittle Rope,\u201d Sleater-Kinney\u2019s 11th album and its second since Weiss\u2019s departure in 2019. The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band\u2019s self-produced 2021 LP \u201cPath of Wellness\u201d and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort \u201cThe Center Won\u2019t Hold.\u201d<\/a> But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band\u2019s mightiest work, \u201cLittle Rope\u201d sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Many of these songs are dispatches from the throes of sudden grief: While writing the album, Brownstein\u2019s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident during a vacation in Italy. The guitarist and singer conveys the numbness that followed on tracks like the mid-tempo mirror-pep-talk \u201cDress Yourself\u201d (\u201cGet up, girl, and dress yourself\/The clothes you love for a world you hate\u201d) and, even more effectively, the jaunty \u201cDon\u2019t Feel Right.\u201d \u201cI get up, make a list,\u201d Brownstein sings in her yelpy lilt, \u201cwhat I\u2019ll do once I\u2019m fixed.\u201d Her own spiky guitar riff leads her out of her stupor, like an energetic dog barking its depressed owner out of bed.<\/p>\n Tucker, the more primal singer of the two, exorcises deeper emotions when she sings lead, as on the eerie and affecting leadoff track \u201cHell.\u201d<\/a> Brownstein often relies on clipped enunciation and clever wordplay, but here Tucker shows the rippling feeling she can pack into a single bellowed word: \u201cWhhhhhyyyy?\u201d<\/p>\n When Sleater-Kinney is at its best, Tucker and Brownstein\u2019s contrasting voices and musical personalities reinforce one another: Consider the overlapping vocals and complexly braided harmonies that provide the sturdy backbone of the band\u2019s 1999 album \u201cThe Hot Rock.\u201d That back-and-forth exchange is largely absent from \u201cLittle Rope\u201d \u2014 somewhat surprisingly, given that the band is now a duo. Here, Brownstein and Tucker don\u2019t seem as much in dialogue, which gives many of these songs a one-dimensionality.<\/p>\n Weiss\u2019s absence, though, is the most obvious lack. Some bands can drop or swap a drummer without much altering its sound, but Sleater-Kinney is not one of those bands, and Weiss is not one of those drummers. (The percussion on \u201cLittle Rope\u201d is credited to both the band\u2019s touring drummer Angie Boylan and the album\u2019s producer, John Congleton, working with Sleater-Kinney for the first time.) Weiss\u2019s style in Sleater-Kinney was as muscular as it was agile, grounding the band\u2019s sound while leading its charge. By contrast, the tempos of many of these newer songs feel relatively lethargic, the tracks made flimsy by their lack of low-end bombast. This is most evident on the sleepy \u201cCrusader,\u201d an ostensible rebuttal to recent moral panic that lacks \u2014 in large part because of its tinny percussion \u2014 urgency and bite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ultimately, Brownstein and Tucker sound caught between their storied past and a more wide-open future. It\u2019s telling that one of the best songs on the album, the sleek, soulfully sung \u201cSay It Like You Mean It,\u201d<\/a> is the one that sounds least<\/em> like a Sleater-Kinney song: It\u2019s a relatively straightforward synth-pop number that Tucker imbues with a pearly pathos. Weiss left the band as Brownstein and Tucker were making moves to take it in a poppier direction, but their pop sensibility has been blunted by interruptions of dissonance attempting to evoke Sleater-Kinney\u2019s past. They\u2019re certainly out of the woods by now, but they sound unsure of where to venture next.<\/p>\n Sleater-Kinney
\u201cLittle Rope\u201d
(Loma Vista)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n