Being a feminist rock fan is a lot like being
a gay Republican — theoretically possible but, in practice,
often demeaning. If you insist on living out the oxymoron, be
prepared to embrace contradiction, if not outright abuse. Rock
& roll, after all, is rooted in the ritualistic celebration of
male sexuality: Elvis’ pelvis; Chuck’s ding-a-ling; the
iconic Warhol crotch shot on the cover of Sticky Fingers. Why do you
think they invented the term “cock rock”?
Imagine, then, the cognitive dissonances that
afflict the feminist rock band. How tiresome to be told that,
despite your testosterone deficiency and your chirpy girlie voice
and your soft little hands, your band has balls. As tempting as it
might be to believe that now, decades after Patti Smith first
out-Jaggered Jagger, sexiness no longer requires being a sex
object, the culture says otherwise: For every Patti Smith, there
are a thousand Paris Hiltons.
Sleater-Kinney, an all-woman power trio from
the Pacific Northwest, has been fighting the good fight since 1994.
Against all odds, the band has reclaimed the rhetoric of rock &
roll, drawing strength from the inherent ironies and subject/object
dichotomies, creating complicated sexual politics from ideals that,
in lesser hands, might have produced mere girl-power propaganda.
More important, though, S-K actually rocks. With each album,
guitarist/singers Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer
Janet Weiss (who replaced original member Lora Macfarlane) have
built on their trademark sound — the intertwining
double-guitar leads, the contrapuntal vocal tradeoffs, the volcanic
epiphanies — and taken it in new directions without
abandoning the basic template. From the cerebral punk of the early
albums to the folky harmonies and girl-group flourishes of
2000’s All Hands on the Bad One and the gospel-inflected polemics of 2002’s One
Beat, the band has managed to reinvent
itself while remaining defiantly unique.
Whether it’s because of a three-year
break from recording or the old seven-album itch is impossible to
say — whatever the reason, The
Woods is a radical departure, even for
a band that’s taken more risks in its 11-year career than
entire teams of NASCAR drivers. In the first few seconds of the
opening track, a punishing voluntary of distorted guitars announces
S-K’s intentions: to get outside its normal comfort zone.
Instead of releasing the CD on Kill Rock Stars, their home since
1997, the
members decided to move to Sub Pop; instead of the usual jagged
minileads and tight song structures, they indulged in
late-’60s guitar heroics and feedback-drenched
improvisational breakdowns; instead of recording with John
Goodmanson, who produced most of their previous CDs, they enlisted
Dave Fridmann, best known for his ornate psych-abstractions with
the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. With both band members and
producer shedding their stereotypes, they’ve set out to
recruit new fans, not just appease the cheerleaders.
But cheerleaders needn’t fret. Despite
the rampant Hendrixisms and righteous fuzz, Tucker still howls and
keens with that breakneck vibrato, Brownstein still yelps and
snarls and coaxes weird but irresistible leads from her guitar, and
Weiss still pounds the skins with furious precision. And the songs!
Although any one of the 10 tracks would have been a highlight on
any other album, the overall quality is so consistent, the
sequencing so inevitable, the juxtapositions so compelling, that
singling out a particular track does a disservice to the others.
From the delirious hooks and chugging riffage of
“Jumpers,” a song about suicide, to the coruscating
art-punk of “Entertain,” from the dizzy,
cowbell-fortified tease of “Rollercoaster” to the
11-minute guitar freakout “Let’s Call It Love,” The Woods is not so
much a collection of songs as a composition, its axis bold as love.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2005.
