[rating=10.00]
For some, when it comes to digging new music, especially from an established act, it tends to be quite difficult to get the pre-release rock critic slobber out of your ears in enough time to actually take in the album caked with a thick layer of the stuff.
Such is the case of the surprise platter from Sleater-Kinney, whose ambush reunion has sent seismic waves of OMGs across the social media networks like the Neutron Bomb. But it seems like this massive landslide of pre-press adulations about No Cities To Love is just an inescapable reality, especially for those on the inside or at least the precipice of the inside of the music industry. And here I sit with that same icky feeling I got upon the similar reactions to the announcements of albums by Outkast, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, Stephen Malkmus, Run the Jewels, Animal Collective, The Arcade Fire, etc., etc. Sadly, I started to get that same feeling in the anticipation leading up to No Cities to Love with each obnoxious Tweet or Facebook status update that moseyed across my computer screen.
However, this 33-minute gut punch of a record roars so loudly that three songs in all of the noise outside the windows of your mind seems to simply evaporate above the electricity of the rejuvinated mojo of the classic S-K lineup of Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss. The critics might be annoying as all hell about them in their hyperbolic adulation, but its with good cause. Even after a decade-long hiatus that saw Corin release two excellent and underappreciated solo albums, Carrie reinvent herself as the Gilda Radner of the NPR era and Janet and Carrie branching out as members of the short-lived supergroup with Ex Hex/Helium siren Mary Timony called Wild Flag, No Cities to Love wastes no time in reminding us exactly why Sleater-Kinney is one of the important American rock bands of the last 20 years.
Working once again with longtime producer John Goodmanson, these ten new songs, primarily recorded in secret at John Vanderslice’s famed San Francisco studio Tiny Telephone, bolster a tighter, more focused attack on the riot grrrl punk sound they helped perfect in the mid-90s, seemingly splitting the difference between The Pretenders and Pussy Riot on ragers like “A New Wave” and “Surface Envy”. Elsewhere, the intertwined angularity of Tucker and Brownstein’s serpentine guitar work moves as effortlessly as vintage Television (albeit with far sharper teeth) on both “No Anthems” and “Fade”, while “Hey Darling” charges like their buddies Pearl Jam at their most vitriolic. Needless to say, these girls have returned ready to make a statement regardless of the high brow NPR company they keep.
In fact, when you dig into the jaunt of this record’s two lead singles, “Bury Your Friends” featuring guest vocals by acclaimed singer/author Miranda July and the propulsive title cut with its gang-style chorus (the video features several of their famous pals, including Carrie’s Portlandia co-star Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, Ellen Page, Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead and Sarah Silverman among others), you almost get a sense they are kind of rallying against the very insiders who perpetually drool over them while at the same time erasing the very essence of the culture from which Sleater sprang.
It should be said that No Cities to Love, while modestly listenable in the digital format, is meant to be heard in its properly intended form, that being vinyl or compact disc. The half-hour of power Sleater-Kinney provides here deserves nothing less than maximum impact.
