Yesterday was Sleater-Kinney Saturday. My first opportunity to listen to their seven albums, back-to-back in sequence, rather than in the order that I purchased them. This experience proved invaluable – allowing me to assess their career, and to conclude that, yes, they were indeed much better than I thought. Better even than the unattainable benchmark that is Throwing Muses? Read on.

Their 1995 eponymous debut smells of the birth of music. It sounds like my Babes in Toyland T-shirt. Their instruments turning out the most basic melodies, but basic is enough because there’s energy and an obvious maturation from their riot grrrl background. The Last Song exudes this perfectly “You said this would be the last time I’d ever cry / last time I didn’t know / how was I supposed to know / this time i found it / I know how to scream.” This is a group who had spent the previous three or four years learning their skills in other bands before congregating around the S-K moniker.

However, it’s hard to distinguish between their first six albums, when listening to them in one session, because the evolution is so seamless and natural. Call the Doctor is where their legacy begins. There are new complexities to the melodies and songs. It’s a real pleasure to listen to something that’s so damn sonically interesting. You can delve into each track and dig out something new each listen. This album also marks the start Carrie Brownstein’s harmonies (maybe almost as legendary as Muses’ Tanya Donelly), and they learn something else: never let an issue get in the way of a good tune.

Dig Me Out is where I came in. With new drummer Janet Weiss, and their continually heightened confidence, they finally break away from their influences, providing an intellectual and emotional post-punk sound whose surface is shiny because it absolutely must hide the passion and pain within. Their next album The Hot Rock continues this, becoming more personal and more experimental musically and vocally – with dualling interplayed lyrics. There’s tension here, and tension is vital in all art forms. Corin’s vocals are more constrained, and Carrie gets further opportunity to showcase her songwriting talents.

If you’ve ever done a Sleater-Kinney session, you’ll know that by now you’ll be grinning from ear to ear, and playing drums with an empty wine glass. Sorry, no photos. It only gets better, because All Hands on the Bad One marks a gradual focusing of their sound. For those unfamiliar with the band, it’s probably the best place to start. The singing is sweeter (check out the harmonies on The Professional), the riffs more obvious. And the songs? Opener The Ballad of a Ladyman has handclaps – listeners gasp. You’re No Rock ‘N’ Roll Fun is a Charlotte Hatherley song with Throwing Muses tambourines. Finale The Swimmer is a remake of Two Step. It’s quite obviously my favourite S-K album (apart from One Beat, which is also my favourite, oh, the dichotomy.)

At this time the Sleater-Kinney fan base grew more irritable, because this is clearly not the same band that they started off with. Which kinda screws around with my ‘seamless’ hypothesis. Heck, just consider the first six albums as one seventy-three track album. Now let’s move onto that sixth album.

One Beat overlays the confidence and accessibility of All Hands on the Bad One with the vitriol and raw energy of their earlier albums, blossoming early on Far Away, then turning popwards on Oh! It is, to quote a cliché, a perfect storm, that demonstrates so obviously what is missing in a genre now dominated by bland, neutered or plainly comical acts. A glance across the music channels will confirm this point.

Seventh and final album, The Woods, is both a rebirth and a natural progression. You can see this coming in One Beat’s Hollywood Ending and Sympathy, but it could be called an evolutionary jump. First track The Fox is shocking. Their sound is louder, compressed and beautifully distorted into sheets of almost white noise that can peel wallpaper. Jumpers takes the ‘last song’ and rebuilds Dig Me Out’s Jenny. The whole point about Galaxie 500 was the setup: guitar solos masquerading as songs, and the 11 minute Let’s Call It Love just wants to be a guitar solo. And you know what? It is. Of course, all this was missed by Q Magazine. But then, it would be.

Time now to answer my question: Sleater-Kinney – better than Throwing Muses? Probably, but I’ll know for sure in sixteen years’ time.

[Sleater-Kinney: A Pitchfork Magazine Retrospective]