In a message dated 2/16/99 11:33:07 AM Central Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Sleater-Kinney: A
Should I add this to the list? >>
chad -- this is probably more than you want--and it's not without its rough
spots--but pasted below is a review i did of sleater-kinney's last album when
it came out in the spring of '97. imo, their new one's just as good. bill f-w
Raw Power
By Bill Friskics-Warren
In her groundbreaking 1960 essay, "The Human Situation: A Feminine View,"
Valerie Saiving asserts that a theologian's gender affects his or her
understanding of God and the world. She notes, for example, that the reason
male theologians have traditionally viewed sin as hubris or overweening pride
stems in part from the social pressure on men to be perpetually self-
transcending achievers. Saiving argues that, for women, sin more appropriately
resembles selflessness or excessive humility--the socialized traits that often
keep them from reaching their potential. Women find redemption, then, not
through sacrificial love, but through self-assertion, through claiming and
exercising the power with which God has endowed them.
On their new album, *Dig Me Out* (Kill Rock Stars), Sleater-Kinney have made
what will doubtless become for riot grrl what Saiving's essay was for a
generation of feminist theologians--a manifesto of a movement come of age. The
Olympia, Wash., trio even achieves the liberation of which Saiving speaks,
albeit through rock 'n' roll, and not through religion.
"Words and guitar/I got it," screams Corin Tucker, reveling in her own
generativity and might. "Words and guitar/I like it/Way way too loud/I got
it," she continues, spurred on by Carrie Brownstein's stabbing six-string and
drummer Janet Weiss' hammerlike blows. Tucker sings as though she can only
find herself through losing herself--she exults in being out of control.
"Dig me out/Dig me in/Outta my body baby outta my skin," she rages, recalling
Iggy Pop at his most id-driven. Much as Iggy embodied the idiocy and monotony
of his surroundings, in the process gaining mastery over them, Tucker turns
hysteria--a condition the ancient Greeks blamed on the uterus--into raw,
unmitigated power. "Worth the trouble/Worth the pain," she shouts on "Things
You Say." "It is brave to feel/It is brave to be alive."
Eschewing the ironic distance of modern rock in favor of a punk classicism
that alternately evokes the jagged rhythms of Liliput and Wire and the
majestic guitar anthems of Television and Husker Du, *Dig Me Out* is as
visceral as rock 'n' roll gets. Moments of reverie occasionally relieve the
tumult, with Sleater-Kinney more in command of loud-soft dynamics than on
previous albums. It's Tucker and Brownstein's evolution as songwriters,
though, that makes *Dig Me Out* even more of an epiphany than last year's
*Call the Doctor*.
The two women have been active on the Olympia punk scene since they were
teenagers, but until now have spent most of their time railing against
socialization and intolerance. Here they don't care about defining themselves
over and against anything, or about portraying themselves as victims; instead,
they've found a room of their own. It's a messy place where beauty and
ugliness lie side by side, but *Dig Me Out* is also where Sleater-Kinney
stakes its claim in the larger world and in the world of rock 'n' roll--and in
the bedroom as well.
The songs here burn with desire, the object of which is usually another woman.
Powered by a surging protopunk guitar riff, "One More Hour" finds Tucker
tormented by the imminent--and apparently final--departure of her lover.
"Don't say another word about the other girl," she pleads. On "Turn It On,"
her longing palpable, she cries, "It's too hard/It's too good/It's just that
when you touched me/I could not stand up." Elsewhere, Tucker and Brownstein
relish their sexual potency. "It's cherry cherry red and it beats on time,"
they moan in rapturous harmony.
Formerly lovers, the two women have nevertheless managed to keep their band
together--something that theologian Saiving might attribute to gender. Whereas
men find themselves rewarded for self-differentiation, for separating
themselves from the pack, women often use power differently, say, to
strengthen and maintain community. Tucker and Brownstein may not be lovers
anymore, but they still enjoy an intimate partnership, one that has enabled
them to make an album as transcendent and as full of release as *Germfree
Adolescents*, *It Takes A Nation of Millions*, or *Nevermind*. "I'll touch the
sky and say what I want," crows Tucker. Her voice, like most of *Dig Me Out*,
is the sound the body makes when the spirit has flown.
