Sleater-Kinney keeps on rocking
CHICAGO — Sleater-Kinney, the great Olympia, band that played last week at the Riviera Theatre in Uptown, has been together exactly 30 years. This is worth noting because founding members Carrie Brown Sleater-Kinney, the band that played a concert at the Riviera Theatre in Uptown, has been together for exactly 30 years. The founding members, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, did not mention their anniversary during the show. This absence of self-aggrandizement has led to their reputation as one of the last great rock acts. The band's songs, "Promised Land," and "Mother," have been played as a rock lifestyle statement, often combining earnest and dramatic with classic rock bombast. Despite their formal punk leanings, Sleater- Kinney remains considered more soulful than any other band. Their 11th album, "Little Rope," debuted with "Hell," with moaned lines like "Hell" and "Untidy Creature."
Veröffentlicht : vor 4 Wochen durch Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune in
CHICAGO — Sleater-Kinney, the great Olympia, band that played last week at the Riviera Theatre in Uptown, has been together exactly 30 years. This is worth noting because founding members Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker never mentioned it themselves during the show, and neither the tour nor the merchandise were splashed with “30th Anniversary.” It’s worth noting because, after decades of anthemic shredding that flirts lovingly with classic rock bombast, this absence of self-aggrandizement — or perhaps, punk nonchalance — has left Sleater-Kinney one of the last great rock acts.
A bunch of years ago, I saw them play Springsteen’s “Promised Land,” and then Danzig’s “Mother,” and that’s as encompassing a rock lifestyle statement as you can get, equal parts earnest and dramatic and defiant and hopeful. And never a pose. When Springsteen sang “Blow away the dreams that tear you apart/ Blow away the dreams that break your heart,” it wasn’t the inspirational rhetoric it reads like, but genuine liberation, and when Tucker waded into the crowd at the end of the night and belted “Untidy Creature,” a new song obliquely mourning the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it wasn’t acting. She sang: “You built a cage but your measurement’s wrong/ ‘Cause I’ll find a way and” — eyes squeezed — “I’ll PICK YOUR LOCK!”
You would not doubt her.
Sleater-Kinney was always one of those bands that felt like a way of being, dopey as that sounds. Formally, they were labeled punk. And the bread crumbs were obviously there; they sprung out of the riot grrrl movement in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, though were more musically ambitious and stylistically omnivorous than most. Even decades later, like fine indie rock wine, you still taste notes of Gang of Four and Sonic Youth. Brownstein still sings with an angular snap reminiscent of late ’70s new wave art punk Lene Lovich. But I have always thought of Sleater-Kinney as more of a soul band, in a pretty literal sense. Their opening, “Hell,” from their 11th album, “Little Rope,” carried a gnarled ambient menace and Old Testament matter-of-factness, with moaned lines like “Hell is just a place that/ We can’t seem to live without.”
As with any soul act, this feeling of dread in the world always winds its way toward transcendence. That part is still nicely embodied by Brownstein, who stood rigid at her microphone, shimmying an inch to the right and left in heeled boots. She vibrated with every lyric traded off with Tucker, looking like an overheating robot, only to burst into Pete Townshend windmills and kicks and leaps and crouches. Tucker’s voice is often called a rock-star banshee wail, and that’s not wrong, but it overlooks her control. On the older Sleater-Kinney tunes they played — “One More Hour,” “Dig Me Out,” “Good Things” — that voice became a reminder of how much soul has been their secret sauce.