Sigh, I had such high hopes for this band. The story thus far: I had gotten The Hot Rock free through some deal when I was a sophomore, and I thought it was a great album. This was a few years after Fugazi dropped Red Medicine, one of my favorite of their albums, and I thought Sleater-Kinney's dual guitar-line work evoked the feeling I got from Red Medicine; creativity through the use of two guitar melodies and nuance through the use of tone and style. Then, they put out All Hands on the Bad One. Then they put out One Beat, and any hopes I had for the band were lost in a flurry of heavy-handed lyricism and even heavier-handed guitar playing.
I assume most of the credit for The Hot Rock must be given to their producer par excellance, Roger Moutenot. He has a way of bringing out the best in already good bands, and is hands down one of the most under appreciated producers around. Well, I don't know that for sure, but I don't hear his name bandied about when people talk of good producers, and his work with Yo La Tengo is quite subtle and deft. Anyway, for Sleater-Kinney's other releases John Goodmanson was at the helm, and while it suits their more rocking nature, it is a bit of a disappointment that the dramatic shift is (most likely) due to the change of producers. Either that or a conscious look at the their demographic. That's just a cynical stab in the dark, however.
Before I go much further, I must add that most Sleater-Kinney fans will really like this album. It's catchy, it's uncomplicated, it's fun music. And if you like all their other albums, then you'll like this too. Tucker's theatrical voice is in full force and a lot of their guitar lines are simple, yet catchy. Ooh, also, on "Far Away", she totally sounds like Eddie Vedder in "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town." Chalk that up to geographic osmosis, if you want. If you're like me though, the rest of these criticisms need to be weighed before you purchase the album.
So, besides the music not being all that great, the one thing that grates on me the most is "Combat Rock", a bit of post-9/11 governmental criticism. Now, politics in music, it's, well, to paraphrase my friend, it's as valid a lyrical topic as love or whatever the mass of rock songs is written about, usually somewhere in the vicinity of those two topics. And I suppose, I must agree that politics is a valid topic, but to use an analogy, why does the general non-mainstream music audience deride twee-pop? Well, the reason is, besides it being saccharine enough to cause diabetes, the writers of twee-pop take complicated subjects like love and relationships and then make them about as complex as a third-grade math primer. And remember, it's not like these people are teenagers writing bad poetry for their friends, these are fully-grown adults, people who should be able to write competently on such subjects. Ok, so for whatever reason, they don't, maybe they're emotionally stunted, maybe they're just shallow, whatever. The point is, any intelligent music listener should slough it off. I mean, maybe it's good as party music or for sullen 12-year-olds to identify with, but no one should take it seriously. You know, if you've ever been in a real adult relationship, you'll realize the ridiculousness of it instantly; it's just too basic and insulting.
The same problem exists with politics in music, and mind you I mean writing about politics sans a movement. Early labor and 60s protest music, those are different topics all together. Well, anyway, the point is much the same as it is with twee. Politics is an intensely complex subject and rattling off a few leftist truisms in the space of a verse barely even touches the layers and nuances of it. Like in the aforementioned song, "Combat Rock"; these were the kinds of things people were writing about weeks after the terrorist attacks last year lamenting whatever Bush and his cronies were doing, laying out their arguments in long, well-argued essays. Here, the results are, well, boring, uncomplicated, disconnected, unfettered, and so on. I suppose if they can pique the interest of some fourteen-year-old suburban kid, then they've done a good job, but Sleater-Kinney are adults and are supposedly writing adult music, and some sort of gravity should come with that.
If they were like Minor Threat or Rage Against the Machine, I could see the point of being uncomplex, I mean, those are basically just songs to vent anger to. There's a reason why their bands didn't last so long: you burn yourself out on anger. When all you can articulate is one emotion due to the nature of your songs, well, things get old fast. And let's face it, anger isn't that complicated an emotion anyway. So, ok, Minor Threat, political hardcore, at least now there's an atmosphere of activism around it; that's where a lot of protest is going on, and it includes a lot of informed people, so the music, while being pretty boring these days, at lest functions as part of a community. But more mainstream political lyrics? Let's put it this way, I'm sure the only dissent a Rage Against the Machine-listening-to frat boy is going to foment is when he tries to date rape whatever unsuspecting freshmen he's lured into his room this week. Articulating the subtleties of politics or being a call to arms is a tricky business, best left to deft lyric-writers, not heavy-handed pedants.
Sleater-Kinney simply fails in this regard, and in general, to create a lyrically compelling album. If you're going to write non-abstract lyrics, then you'd better either be able to say things in a way no one else can or you'd better be able to write about the unsaid facets of your topic, that is, if you want to create a piece of art and not just something to sell records. Like I said, however, One Beat is definitely a must for Sleater-Kinney fans, but for anyone who has reservations, either before or after my criticisms, you should probably stay away.
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