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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Sleater-Kinney, April 30, Coachella 2006

Friday, May 05, 2006

this entry brought to you by sleater-kinney, "let's call it love"




One of the frustrating aspects of being at a festival with over 40 bands playing in a day is that diehard fans of the headliners will cram close to the stage at the beginning of the day and sit and wait through bands they've never heard of or care anything about simply so they can be up close, front and center during their favorite band, even if that band is 10 long hours away. Unfortunately for people that do this, Sleater-Kinney is not a band that can easily be gotten into. Both singers, Corrin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein have grating vocals, and the lead singer, Corrin, has a voice that is often described upon initial listen as "nails on a chalkboard". Their newest album, The Woods, is especially not meant for the uninitiated; it is loud, noisy, filled with lots of distortion and feedback and at times, chaos. The audience that Sunday at Sleater-Kinney was split very evenly between three groups: impatient Tool fans who had been there since 11 in the morning when the gates opened; much more patient and generally agreeable but much more mainstream-leaning Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans waiting for that band, who would play directly after Sleater-Kinney; and rabid Sleater-Kinney fans who probably could have left the festival ecstatic and satisfied even if they were the last band of the day. It was really easy to spot who was who. Tool fans were the ones with the disgusted face, Yeah Yeah Yeah fans were the ones with the confused, quizzical face, and Sleater-Kinney fans were the ones with the giant, adoring smiles on their face when the band walked at a quarter ‘til their set time to set-up the stage with the roadies and surprise the audience with a impromptu jam as a sound check.

There were definitely some sound problems with Sleater-Kinney's set. The guitars both were having trouble, and perhaps most egregiously, Corrin's mic was giving her problems during some songs when she hit a certain octave. She would sing "Nobody lingers like..." and what's supposed to follow is "your fingers on my heart", but what would instead come out was nothing. During this song, the lead guitar was almost impossible to hear. Elsewhere, during the climactic "Let's Call it Love" Corrin was visibly frustrated with her mic and simply mumbled what would ordinarily be a soaring chorus. It's because of little things that added up like this that made Sleater-Kinney feel like the least satisfying of the major bands I'd seen at the end of the day, despite that I was looking forward to seeing them the most-- after all, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Tool, who also played that night, were just starting major world tours. Sleater-Kinney is just now ending theirs, so I would've prioritized them over any other band had they had a competing time slot.

Of course, frustrating sound problems didn't stop the show from being great. The set opened with a triumphant "What's Mine Is Your's", which saw a very sexy Corrin Tucker shimmy up and down, her arm outreached come-hitheringly to the audience. Corrin herself came off as very professional and serious, and when not flashing the audience her inviting eyes she seemed almost intimidating, like the perfect girl at the other side of a party that you just can't get the balls to go over and talk to. Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney's other guitarist/singer was extremely difficult to take your eyes off of, as, in utter rockstar fashion, she jumped around the stage, her leg kicked up like an axe in time to especially throttling beats, her guitar behind her back as she riffed. Janet Weiss, who proved herself as one of indie rock's most incredible drummers on The Woods was like a steady, throttling whirlwind. By the end of the show she looked like someone had punched her in the face; she seemed exhausted and zoned off in another world, yet her drums pounded and crashed like she was channeling Keith Moon's ghost, while the band, easily the noisiest I'd heard all day, rocked through a set that mostly consisted of songs off The Woods and One Beat, their previous record.

Sleater-Kinney, who has been making records for over a decade now and have been on just as many tours, had a certain intimacy with the audience despite being noisy and heavier than nonfans had any expectations of. They have a very clear knowledge of their place in rock & roll and played very well to it, keeping long-time fans knowing how appreciated they were and maybe, hopefully, changing someone's mind who had no idea who Sleater-Kinney was as to what an all-girl band could sound like. At some point towards the beginning of the set, Carrie asked the audience if we were going to head to the dance tent and see Madonna later-- lots of people cheered. She then said "Well you'll definitely be seeing Tool, right?" and she threw up devil-horned fist-- everybody cheered. Then she said to those uninitiated to Sleater-Kinney, "Well, we're more like Tool than we are Madonna." Corrin gave her partner a confused look and said "Uhm, I wouldn't say that." The thing is, Corrin proved how completely wrong she was by her band ripping through one of the fiercest sets on Coachella's second day, sound quirks and all.
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with love from CRS @ 10:24 PM 

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