Number 4 of 2005 — Sleater-Kinney: The Woods

Oh, how I’ve wanted to write that title for ages. Excuse me if this review is badly written – it’s because I don’t think I can adequately explain what makes this album the most exciting one of last year.

I would guess that to fully appreciate this album, one has to know the musical history of Sleater-Kinney: to have experienced each of their releases; each future one referring back to earlier albums, whilst trying something new. Remembering that Sleater-Kinney were (are?) torch-bearers for both riot-grrrl intellectuals and queer-punk.

I admitted in a post earlier this year that I was scared to play this album. I’ve been listening to music seriously for twenty years, building up a collection of perhaps 1,700 albums, and this is the only one that I have resisted playing. Resisted playing for seven months.

But I needn’t had worried. Whilst The Woods rocks, big time (particularly on the eleven minute Let’s Call It Love), and the dualling vocals of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein are perhaps more dissonant, The Woods is a beautiful album to listen to. Provided that you have headphones, accommodating neighbours or you live on an island. Because it demands to be played loud.

The Woods doesn’t draw you in. The first song The Fox explodes right from the start. This is how it’s going to be: crushingly heavy guitars and drums with flailing vocals. Claustrophobic. No way out. If you survive this, you might just survive the rest of the album. As Pitchfork put it: “Those who make it to Wilderness will have passed a test of sorts.”

Well, I made it. Wilderness has more in common with their earlier albums, turning personal conflicts into frustration with U.S. politics (“a two-headed brat / tied to the other for life”). Oh yeah, and guitar solos and riffs that come straight outta Throwing Muses. If anything, it’s the tunes and grooves that are the surprise discovery on this album. What’s Mine Is Yours, has them, breaks them apart, then introduces a meandering guitar solo, backwards effects and colossal reverb, before a bass-line leads it back into the rest of the song, almost Patti Smith-style. Except, of course, there is no bass player: Corin plays a baritone guitar, and Carrie tunes hers down.

Jumpers [video] exhibits beauty in personal catastrophe: “There is a bridge adored and famed / The Golden spine of engineering / Whose back is heavy / With my weight”. This song is probably their finest creation. “Four seconds was the longest wait.” Jumpers is followed by Modern Girl, which provides an alternative to suicide. After 11 years Sleater-Kinney are still defiant and angry. Dave Fridmann’s production grunges out the ending. But if it’s grunge you want, take the conclusion of Rollercoaster, which crushes the guitars almost beyond recognition, but still finds so much space for the harmonies.

Entertain [video] sonically reminds me of the video for Radiohead’s Karma Police. I’m in the car and it’s Sleater-Kinney lighting the match, this time over the top of military drumming. “All you want is entertainment / Rip me open it’s free;” the anaesthetising of the entire modern world.

If there’s one album I can compare this to, it’s Throwing Muses eponymous final album. Both were recorded quickly and both sound like a bunch of people who know one another and their music so intimately that the songs just pour out of their souls and onto tape.

Steep Air re-iterates their anger with sexual inequality, or perhaps provides more commentary on the state of their country. It’s probably also a teaser for the following Let’s Call It Love, which is an invitation to the dance or to the fight, complete with sporting metaphors. Unable to reach any conclusion about relationships except the title. The song ends with a massive band improvisation, but the group don’t improvise around the song. Instead, they wander all over the place, before, somehow, managing to segue into the final song Night Light. A ghostly finale: “How do you do it / With visions of worst to come / Live in the present / And spin off the rays of the sun”

Throwing Muses disbanded after they released Limbo, then came back together six years later for their 2003 album. On 27 June 2006, Sleater-Kinney announced an indefinite hiatus. I’m hoping too, that this isn’t their final album, fitting though it is, because the world needs more of their music.