CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of Sleater-Kinney, The Woods

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

this entry brought to you by nirvana, "dumb"




A few years ago I discovered Sleater-Kinney with Dig Me Out, their third album, the first to land them critical praise and make them critical darlings. And although there was definitely something to admire about these three pissed off post-punk indie chicks, I was not sure what to make of that voice. Corrin Tucker, the band's lead singer (although co-singer Carrie Brownstein's snotty, bratty bleet that still manages to be likable gets much more air time nowadays than back then) doesn't really sing in the traditional "pretty" sense. She wails. She sounds a lot like a harpy would, actually, if a harpy were sweet, petite, had a coy smile. After a few listens, Corrin's voice turned from "horrible banshee shriek" to a personification of raw, unfiltered emotion. Liked her or not, understood her lyrics or not, you felt what she was feeling, and before you realized it, you were in love.

At some point after 2002's One Beat, their wonderful, gritty reaction to 9/11 (and childbirth, an odd juxtaposition), the band, always pretty raw to begin with, decided to enlist Flaming Lips producer David Fridmann and turn their sound into an equation of Corrin's voice. The Woods sounds like it was pumped through an amp that was labeled "fierce" and then cranked to 11. Songs are drenched in ear-ringing feedback and fuzz, basslines thickened, flattened, manipulated. And drummer Janet Weiss, always a solid, dependable drummer, has somehow turned into a goddamn force of nature. There's a point in "The Fox", the album's chugging, bombastic opener, about 1 minute and 10 seconds in, where she machine-guns a drumroll that you think might make your head explode. On Dig Me Out, the girls rocked like they needed to prove something. On The Woods, it's as if they know they don't need to get your attention anymore, and for their next trick, they shed their clothes and reveal that they're actually rock gods. No, I mean that.

To be honest, I don't really fully understand the meanings to every song on The Woods, though this was never a problem on previous records. Even the most lyrically straight-forward songs-- the pounding, ferocious "Entertain" (a criticism of reality shows, although much meaner than you're expecting); the fuzzy, happy-go-lucky "Modern Girl" that starts to take on a darker, sarcastic undertone; the grinding, pulsing, done-in-one-take 11 minute climax "Let's Call it Love" (the most exhilarating and exhausting come-on of all time), and "Night Light", the lost, lonely epilogue "Let's Call it Love" bleeds into-- are still pretty lyrically dense, with dueling perspectives between Corrin's wail and Carrie's whine, which occasionally coincide but mostly go back and forth. Elsewhere, however, one is not exactly sure what the girls are talking about. Corrin sings about a fox and a duck falling in love in the opener "The Fox". Both girls spin a tale about desperation on "Jumpers", a song with urgent, lonely strings that sound on the verge a nervous breakdown, but the song's lyrics don't seem to allude to suicide, really. "What's Mine is Your's" seems to be an adoring love song, except that it breaks into a feedback-laden dirge about feeling like you don't fit in. It's not that the lyrics are bad-- they're not. They are thick, dense, and beckon to be paid attention to and figured out, but seem purposefully obtuse compared to previous albums. The point here seems to be to get lost in the incredible, overwhelming groove, the ambient feedback, the firecracker drums, the raw, passionate rock that Sleater-Kinney have so comfortably fit into. Extra nods go here to producer David Fridmann, who has managed to capture the exact sound I imagine this record would have if played live, because listening to The Woods leaves you feeling like you've just been to a concert-- your ears ring, you're utterly exhausted.

To say that this is the best album of 2005 seems to sell it short. The Woods is the kind of album that would turn your eighth or ninth favorite band into legends, the kind of record that, like Kid A, Elephant, and The Fragile , will be mentioned 20 years from now in rock magazines, amongst aged hipsters, and coffee house kids desperate to find music from before whatever pop nonsense will overcome the mainstream world in the future. What's interesting is that, unlike other hugely important, legendary bands in-the-now like Radiohead, The White Stripes, or Nine Inch Nails, Sleater-Kinney could never have mainstream acceptance, partly because of a prejudice in mainstream music against women who genuinely rock. But even if PJ Harvey and Patti Smith were played on the radio every day, the two singers in Sleater-Kinney don't have voices everyone could appreciate. And you know what? That's perfect. This will be the classic album your children will have to actively find... and when they do, they'll appreciate it that much more.
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with love from CRS @ 9:12 PM 

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