Dec 14

Sleater-Kinney

SLEATER-KINNEY
 
 
Sleater-Kinney  is an American rock band that formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1994.  The band’s lineup features Corin Tucker (vocals and guitar), Carrie Brownstein (guitar and vocals), and Janet Weiss (drums).  Sleater-Kinney is a key part of the riot grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest.  The band is also known for its feminist and left-leaning politics.  The band released 7 studio albums between 1994 and 2005.  They reunited in 2014 and released No Cities to Love on January 20, 2015.  Greil Marcus named Sleater-Kinney America’s best rock band in a 2001 issue of Time magazine.  Stereogum called them the greatest living rock band in 2015.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
For Dead Hippie’s detractors on the Internet, it is Simon Smallwood’s singing that the various blogger types don’t like:  “histrionics” come up a lot, “gallingly awful” is one description, and still another complained that he was trying to copy The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (remember “Fire”?) – like that’s a bad thing.  I guess it is a personal preference; there are some who consider Sleater-Kinney lead singer Corin Tucker difficult to listen to (not to mention Bob Dylan), but I have never had that problem – far from it. 
 
(July 2012)
 
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However, that certainly was not true of all of the female musicians in that time period.  Though I was slow to get the details, I was starting to hear about the rumblings of the “riot grrrl” movement, a female offshoot of punk rock; about all I had actually heard in the early days is the 1992 hit “Pretend We’re Dead” by a band called L7 (slang for “square”).  Singer/guitarist Corin Tucker was in Heavens to Betsy, one of many early riot grrrl rock duos.  The fact that only two people could create such a big sound was a revelation and led to a slew of other two-member rock bands in the years to come.  Classically trained pianist Carrie Brownstein (also a vocalist and guitarist) met Tucker in 1992 and was so inspired by her and other early riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill that she started her own grrrl band, Excuse 17.  What began as a side project between the two of them became a full-fledged band with the addition of drummer Lora MacFarlane; MacFarlane was replaced by the third album with another drummer, Janet Weiss.  The arrival of Sleater-Kinney’s lo-fi–looking first album in 1995, Sleater-Kinney (appropriately released on a label called Chainsaw Records) quickly established them as one of the finest feminist punk rock bands of that period.  Each album brought them greater fame and a more widespread fan base; by the beginning of the new millennium, Sleater-Kinney had enough mainstream appeal that Time magazine named them America’s best rock band in a 2001 issue.  Their 2002 album, One Beat is one of my very favorite albums of the 2000’s decade. 
 
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The king of all of the new garage-y bands is probably the blues-rock duo the Black Keys.  Like Sleater-Kinney, each Black Keys album seems to be better than the one that preceded it and has brought them greater fame and a wider audience. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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BoySkout’s music is more new wave than riot grrrl; other ingredients are old-style punk sensibilities plus a love of catchy pop tunes, and it seems clear to me that the bandmembers have been enjoying their Sleater-Kinney albums.  The songs have an underlying current of angst and suspicion coupled with a sense of fun.  For instance, the anxious music on “Secrets” creates a feeling of foreboding underlying these lyrics:  “She told you all my secrets / She knew them all so well / She told you all my secrets / . . . She promised not to tell . . .”  

 

(January 2014)

 

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In 1986, Mick Collins was a founding member of the seminal garage/punk band the Gories; the group had a female drummer, Peggy O’Neill plus a second guitarist Dan Kroha (all were from metro Detroit).  In other words, the group had two guitarists but no bassist, like the Cramps and Sleater-Kinney.  Of the Gories, Wikipedia notes:  “They were among the first 1980’s garage rock bands to incorporate overt blues influences.”  Alexandra Zorn writing for Allmusic states in the article on the band:  “The emergence of the Gories heralded a new Golden Age of Detroit rock beginning in the late ’80s; a renaissance of noise and rust-belt rock that lasts through to today.” 

 

(December 2014)

 

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The Sonics are often cited as being among the earliest garage rock bands, having formed in 1960 in Tacoma, Washington with a raw, energetic sound from the get-go. They were a key part of the Pacific Northwest scene that also included the Wailers (not Bob Marley’s band) and Paul Revere and the Raiders; in later years, this part of the country was renowned for the grunge scene of Nirvana and others and the riot grrrl scene of Sleater-Kinney and others.
 
(December 2016)
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Karen O (lead vocals, piano) met Nick Zinner (guitar, keyboards) at a bar in New York and made an instant connection. As the band evolved, Brian Chase (drums) joined the lineup; he and Karen O had known each other as students at Oberlin College, where they were heavily influenced by the “avant-punk” bands in Ohio during that time period. Yeah Yeah Yeahs became the opening act for hot bands of the period like Sleater-Kinney, the Strokes, and the White Stripes. 
(June 2017)
Last edited: March 22, 2021