Now Is the Time to Invent
The legacy (and the return) of Sleater-Kinney, which was once the best rock band in America.
![Courtesy of Tamala Poljak. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker perform at No Life Records in West Hollywood, California, circa 1996](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20141030215516im_/http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/10/141010_CBOX_SleaterKinney.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg)
Courtesy of Tamala Poljak
A generation ago a trio stormed out of the Pacific Northwest to become the most critically acclaimed rock band of their era. They rode the crest of a fiercely independent, now-legendary musical subculture, steeped in the aesthetic iconoclasm and righteous angst of the best punk rock but with a twist of the ineffably unique. Their songs, blitzes of scalding guitar and thundering drums, were nonetheless sneakily melodic, featuring passionate, piercing vocals. When the dust had cleared—if it ever really has—they’d produced some of the best and most ferocious music of the past several decades. And they had a way cooler name than Nirvana.
This week Sub Pop releases Start Together, a limited-edition vinyl boxed set that contains all seven studio albums by Sleater-Kinney. It’s a body of work that spans 1995–2005 and ranks among the finest any American band has ever assembled. Forged in the riot grrrl cauldron of Olympia, Washington, Sleater-Kinney was the brainchild of singer/guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, late of the bands Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, respectively. Boasting an unusual lineup of two guitars and drums—Janet Weiss would eventually become the band’s longest-tenured and most iconic drummer—Sleater-Kinney was a perfect fusion of musical personalities, a spiky and sparkling rock ’n’ roll machine. Smart, funny, angry, beautiful, loudly and utterly unique, at their best they were a band for the ages, and as Start Together reminds, Sleater-Kinney were at their best nearly every time they stepped into a room together. And to quote another punk legend, the past isn’t even past: In the wake of Monday’s announcement of a forthcoming album and tour, Start Together heralds a revival in every sense.
Sleater-Kinney took its name from an exit sign off Interstate 5, and in 1995 released a roaring laceration of a debut album on the aptly named Chainsaw Records. Sleater-Kinney was 10 tracks long and clocked in at a brisk 22 minutes, about the amount of time it takes to drink a strong IPA or watch an episode of Portlandia on Netflix. The following year saw the release of Call the Doctor, an enormous leap forward in every sense. At the end of 1996, Call the Doctor claimed the third slot in the Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop critics’ poll, the first of four times that a Sleater-Kinney album would land in the poll’s top five.
In 1997 Sleater-Kinney jumped from Chainsaw to Kill Rock Stars, and released their third album, Dig Me Out. Dig Me Out took all the best elements of punk—its immediacy, its concision, its volubility—and wed it to some of the most adventurous writing and musicianship the genre had heard since the Clash. It was the band’s first album with Weiss, whose nimble, relentlessly creative drumming proved to be the perfect bridge between Brownstein and Tucker’s dueling down-tuned guitars. The album opened with the title track, a twisting thicket of gnarled guitars and drums that opens onto an anthemic refrain, then moved to “One More Hour,” an unexpectedly new wave–ish stew of stuttering drums and intricate, layered melodies. The musical and emotional depths of the album were astonishing: From the aching “Buy Her Candy” to the coulda-shoulda-been-a-hit “Dance Song ’97,” the album distilled all the raucous fury of riot grrrl into 13 tracks of painstakingly crafted miniatures, then lovingly smashed the shit out of itself. “The catharsis Sleater-Kinney seek is more than just fun,” wrote Ann Powers, reviewing the album for Spin in 1997. “It’s a battle in earnest for the human right to know and possess yourself.”
Seventeen years after its release Dig Me Out remains a landmark of 1990s rock, a work that doesn’t so much transcend its particular time and place as embody them so perfectly that it pulls you back through its sheer will. Had the members of Sleater-Kinney never played another note in its aftermath they would still be demi-legends, but instead they did something almost more improbable: They got even better. By the early 2000s the band had moved toward a muscular, bluesy assuredness in both writing and playing, widening its instrumental palate to forge increasingly enormous soundscapes. 2002’s One Beat featured Stones-y hooks and horns while 2005’s The Woods was a stunning suite of guitar goddess noise-pop.