Moving sucks. And after being a college student for all of seven
years, I’ve become accustomed to boxing things up and moving at the
drop of a thirty day notice. (Usually due to house roommates
packing up and leaving on a short notice) Just when you find that
right apartment, scoped out every nitch of its charm, you find
yourself in a new environment. And in most cases, that new
environment isn’t nearly as cozy as your last.
Okay, enough with the apartment analogy. Much like getting used
to a new place, getting used to a musical departure takes some
effort for music fan. As much courage as it takes an artist to
willfully ask an audience to go down a slightly non-beaten path, it
takes some courage for a listener to keep an open mind.
Sleater-Kinney’s latest album,
The Hot Rock, is that sort of album. Their last album,
Dig Me Out, was a joyous romp, think the Go Gos on
methamphetamines. It had monster riffs and the vocal tag team of
Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker drew some comparisons to the
Keith Richards/Mick Jagger chemistry. The album was so well
received that it finished behind only Bob Dylan’s
Time Out Of Mind and Radiohead’s
OK Computer in the
Village Voice “Pazz and Jop Poll” in 1997.
Though commercial success still evaded the band, that could have
been solved with one or two
Dig Me Out type hits on
The Hot Rock. Rock music needs a jolt and it still has a
large buying audience and Sleater-Kinney is one of those bands that
can tap into that market. But instead of doing a retread of
Dig Me Out, Sleater-Kinney take a different path and come up
with a batch of quiet, slightly subdued tracks on
The Hot Rock.
The surprises aren’t immediately there in
The Hot Rock. While songs like “Little Babies” and “Dance
Song ’97” grabbed you by the neck and forced a melody in your head
that you couldn’t escape for the rest of the day. But new songs on
The Hot Rock have that quality.
Still,
The Hot Rock shines with tight musicianship. The dual guitar
work of Brownstein and Tucker is as tight wound as ever. And Janet
Weiss, the newest member of the band, has a great ear for rhythm:
especially her use of the snare.
Relationships are still Tucker’s muse on
The Hot Rock. Her unique lyrics: sometimes spoken in
fragments, detail relationships in all stages. On “Burn, Don’t
Freeze,” she gets creative, singing, “I’d set your heart on
fire/but arson is no way/ to make a love burn brighter.” But on
“Don’t Talk Like,” she slaps you with a defiant lyric like, “Don’t
talk like you’re nineteen/you’re thirty-five.”
Gossip freaks who will try to decipher whether or not each lyric
has some sort of lesbian undertone or overtone to it will totally
be turned off with
The Hot Rock. Straight/bi/gay/lesbian whatever: in
Sleater-Kinney’s world, a relationship that falls apart hurts and
jars just the same in any situation.
The more I listen to
The Hot Rock, the more I like it. But the unabashed magic
that the band possessed on
Dig Me Out is lacking on
The Hot Rock. It seems the band tried to establish a more
subdued, intimate sound on this album. And they accomplished their
goal. With every listen,
The Hot Rock yields more and more rewards. But in the back
of your mind, you still pine for an atomic blast like “Words And
Guitar” to shake some dust off the top of your speakers.
