We’ve got Sleater-Kinney back!
After nine years of offshoots, most of them good and two of them, Wild Flag and Corin Tucker Band, better than that the Clash of riot grrrls, and circa Dig Me Out, the greatest rock and roll band in the world, have played everything out till they are back together.
I’ve seen Sleater-Kinney umpteen times, never missed a local appearance since Call The Doctor, watched them grow and grow and then around All Hands On The Bad One I lost interest a little and never really got it back though listening to The Woods again after all this time, it sounds a lot better then I remembered it.
Anyway, the band just got back together and the first release, with a cool video featuring writer-performance artist, etc, Miranda July is pretty excellent. “Bury Our Friends” might not have the heavy guitar licks they are famous for, but it has the atonal spitefulness and the harmonies on helium we know and love.
“Exhume our idols, bury our friends” isn’t the subject matter here, “Only I can be sick of me is” and it places itself somewhere between proto-feminism and dodgy aphorism and the song itself is a pure and timeless SK sound , even if the guitars are a little rusty.
The song is off the suddenly eagerly anticipated January 2015 Sleater-Kinney album, No Cities to Love and the concert tour, playing the dreaded T5 in February.
Grade: B+
