SLEATER-KINNEY + Mary Timony
London ULU 28th July 2000

A sell out crowd for the biggest date of Sleater Kinney's UK tour, and although there are evidently a lot of Americans in London for the summer who've come along, this is still a fair reflection of their growing status in this country.
Mary Timony, who some of you may know from her old band Helium, warms up the audience with a solo set of meandering prog-rock. As far as I could tell most of it is from her new album 'Mountains' which carries on from where Helium's last release 'The Magic City' left off, in other words, left-field American indie guitar music meets early 70s English prog rock. Obviously not to everyone's taste, but she gets a surprisingly warm reception, especially when Carrie Brownstein from SK adds a bit of extra guitar to the proceedings.
On a good day Sleater-Kinney are in my opinion one of the most exciting live bands in the world, and tonight they don't disappoint me. In an effort to blend as much of their new-ish album 'All Hands on the Bad One' with their fine back catalogue, they play a longer set than usual, and they just manage to keep up the intensity for nearly 90 minutes. The most impressive material from the new album - 'All Hands on the Bad One', 'The Ballad of a Ladyman', and the pop classic 'You're no Rock n Roll Fun', draw the biggest response although the highlights from 'Dig Me Out' are my personal faves. Maybe it's because they were the first SK songs I ever heard, but 'Words And Guitar', 'Dig Me Out' and the almost impossibly exciting 'Turn It On' are fantastic.
Even this late in the tour Corin Tucker is in fine voice and ably assisted by Carrie on guitar and the ultra cool Janet Weiss on drums, they make the criticisms of their minimal line-up pale into insignificance. So what if there's no bass!?
Extra points too, for mucking around with the male rock heritage on the encore's cover of the old Creedence Clearwater Revival tune 'Fortunate Son'. Like Patti Smith's 'Gloria' they understand that there's no sense in changing the gender of the song to make their point, they just claim it as their own.
(9/10)
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