33 rebellions per minute
"Our love is the size of these tumors inside us"
1999
Sleater-Kinney, THE HOT ROCK
In accordance with music column certification specifications, I am hereby informing you that guitarist Corin Tucker and guitarist Carrie Brownstein, and maybe also drummer Janet Weiss, all of Sleater-Kinney, are lesbians. You didn't need to know that, and I didn't need to know that, and actually I _don't_ know it-- you certainly couldn't deduce it from THE HOT ROCK, for example. But as long as I'm mentioning it, I also might as well review the album, and I might as well do it now, 4/20/99, to mark the probably impermanent fact that so far, to my surprise, HOT ROCK is my favorite album of the year. I'd kind of avoided Sleater-Kinney, despite three years of critics' hype, on the grounds of their connection to Heavens To Betsy, whose sole album CALCULATED ('94) was a competent but pale Nirvana knockoff rendered essentially useless by the fact that vocalist Corin Tucker, sadly, was the polar opposite of "competent but pale". Somewhere since then, she learned to sing tunes, to write lyrics that don't take simple-minded sincerity to embarrassing levels, and to turn her screech down from its initial resemblance to the fiercely-aimed whistle which Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars used to trip people at fifty paces; even at worst, Corin now sounds basically like Jen Trynin in a real bad mood. Okay, that's still fairly piercing.
I also hereby point out, as per regulations, "Look! They have no bassist!"-- although one of the guitarist does seem to tune her guitar low, or something, and use it kind of like a bass, chunky chords. You can still tell it _isn't_ a bass, and some people mind. The other guitarist usually plays one note at a time, which can be relaxed and flowing (normally) or can buzz harshly at you like on "One Song For You" Both guitarists either tune their guitars to different nots, or shape their hands in unusual chords, meaning that the songs are energized 4- and 5-chord rockers but don't sound like anyone else's 4- and 5-chord rockers, just like Sleater-Kinney ones-- even (especially?) when they decorate "the Hot Rock" with castanets and "Living In Exile" with handclaps and quasi-psychedelic string-bending. In the album's context, you get used to the tuning real fast: this, for the next 45 minutes, is what punk rock sounds like.
Sleater-Kinney have also mastered a really cool vocal trick. Carrie Brownstein's voice is a gentle low alto, and the majority of the songs, at some point, will intertwine separate lyrics and melodies for the two singers. It's not strictly speaking harmony-- the rhythms are generally adjusted so that only one is singing at any given fraction of a second-- but it seems to me like a sophisticated little trick, and it's done with remarkable smoothness, expertly balancing the strengths of the singers and reducing the impact of the weaknesses. It makes it hard to follow the lyrics without a lyric sheet, but they give you a sheet, so there.
As lyrics go, I'd regard this as fairly standard defiant pop, with more panache than usual but not necessarily more insight. Standard relationship accusations and worries ("Lookin' at me like I'm the hottest in town, then turnin' your back when your movin' around") are often cleverly given song-length extended metaphors (about robberies, sinking ships) as a disguise that may not fool us into thinking there's plenty of ideas there, but surely has the useful function of keeping the writing process fun for Tucker and Brownstein; if there was a one-song-per-idea regulation, there would be far too little music in the world. "The Size Of Our Love", a gentle love song with violin, sung to a dying lover in a bedside hospital vigil, meets the originality quota and proves that even Corin's singing can avoid scaring the cats if she tries. Everything else, well, it's guitar-guitar-drums, it's loud and fast, it's designed to kick ass. I vote with those who say it succeeds.
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