It’s been two years, give or take a few days, since one of the best rock bands of all time decided to call it quits. Sleater-Kinney gave the world about a decade of music, and for that I respectfully pour out a virtual forty for them on the curb. A few key S-K points and/or moments:

- No one has heard a voice like Corin Tucker’s, before or since (though a friend once said that her distinctive warble reminded him of Buffy Ste-Marie). The combination of her punk-rock yelp with Carrie Brownstein’s more melodic counterpart - often with both women singing completely different lines - never fails to stop my heart.

- They rock so hard, man. Carrie Brownstein is a babe, and her stage presence is amazing, all Pete Townsend windmills and leg-kicks.

- In a Punk Planet interview, Carrie Brownstein once said

“It’s like they think they’re paying you a compliment by taking you out of the ‘girl-group ghetto’ and saying that you’ve transcended gender. But that’s never been our goal. I mean, how could we possibly transcend something that’s so experiential and part of who we are? And why would we ever want to be ‘Men in Rock?’ It’s not a history that we’re part of, nor would we like to emulate it.”

Did I mention she’s a babe?

- They never seemed content to rest on their punk-rock laurels, and each album was a step forward into new sound; their last album The Woods took envelope pushing to the next level.

- At their last show in Montreal, the opening band didn’t make it over the border, so S-K entertained the crowd by inviting people up onstage for Sleater-Kinney karaoke, with the band playing live behind them. So delightfully awkward.

This video for the song Get Up was directed by Miranda July, and it’s totally creepy and weird.

Ladies, I salute thee. The world is just a little less cool without you.

What do you remember?

Ah summer, season of the construction project. No matter where I go, no matter how idyllic the park or peaceful the rooftop, there’s always some tool (and some person using it, har har) razzing up the neighbourhood. Oh well, all the more reason to stay indoors trolling YouTube for videos.

Some of the most curious and intriguing music I’ve heard in a while is being made by Montreal’s Elfin Saddle, a duo whose stage set-up could probably double as either a kitchen or toolshed - you got yer pot lids, saws, duct tape and what-all and somehow it all adds up to beeyootiful music.

Here they are playing live in Montreal at a showcase handpicked by music fans extraordinaire Said the Gramophone. I especially love Emi Honda’s skills on the singing saw; if only my neighbours’ backyard projects could sound so sweet.

You can also buy mp3s of Elfin Saddle and many other fine bands from the website Villa Villa Nola, an innovative “store” that releases rare recordings on the internet, meaning there’s a lot of opportunity to get a hold of stuff that may be too ephemeral or small-scale for a record label or large-scale distribution but still really ought to be heard. They cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to you! Um, okay, now that the spirit of Ikea has left my body, I leave you to your listening. Enjoy.

Kansas City art-punk brats Ssion (pronounced “shun”) set out to make what singer Cody Critcheloe describes as “the gayest record ever”; what resulted was Fools Gold, an album that is maybe more pomo-hop than homo-pop. But let’s not mince words - it is pure disco-punk dance party mania. Man, I wonder what Sid Vicious would think about how it’s now possible to use a term like “disco-punk” without batting an eyelash. But I digress.

Here’s the video for Street Jizz, a (slightly satirical?) song about the sexual and class dynamics between middle-class men and the street-culture youth they cruise for. Look for the various popular (and unpopular) culture references the band drops - Leonard Cohen (think the album cover of I’m Your Man), Tom of Finland, Sonic Youth, and others I’m probably too dense to notice. Also, when Critcheloe is reading a book called “Women In Rock” in the very first part of the video, it’s more than a cute name-drop - in an interview, he cites female musicians like Courtney Love and Kim Gordon to be among his biggest influences.

Today seems like a good day to post Buffy Sainte-Marie‘s heartbreaking song My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying. It’s a brutally honest and powerful comment not just on First Nations history but on how that history has been censored, covered up, and just plain ignored. This version was performed in the 60s on Pete Seeger’s show Rainbow Quest; Buffy Ste-Marie is playing at the Montreal Jazz fest this summer along with various other fests across the country. She is amazing.

Laura Barrett describes her music as “neurotic sci-folk for neurotic sci folk,” a summary which seems so charming and concisely accurate that I may as well just sign off now and go back to figuring out how to water tomatoes from the bottom. But that would be too easy, and goodness knows sci-folk don’t take it easy.

Barrett is a startlingly unique songwriter, but you’d have to check twice to know it for sure. That is to say, she doesn’t get all up in your grill about it. Like the previously-Picked tUnE-yArDs, Barrett has a way of slipping her weirdness just under your radar, so you’re barely conscious of it before it’s gone again and you’re left wondering if she really did say something about eating plastic bags like lettuce. Also, she plays the kalimba (also known as the thumb piano) beautifully, which alone sets her apart from, well, most non-African musicians. But she’s no novelty act - the kalimba, after all, is just an instrument, like a guitar or piano, and she seems to rely on it for its uncommon and delicate sound rather than its uniqueness in indie-pop circles.

Her album Earth Sciences is now out on Paper Bag Records, which means that instead of running after her waving a five-dollar bill you’re hoping to exchange for a CD-R with a handmade sleeve (my preferred method of music acquisition), you can just order it online. Which may or may not be a good thing.

The video for Robot Ponies, the album’s opening track, is a simple and slightly nostalgic thing that will delight librarians and fans of antiquated technology alike. And should you happen to be both, well, what are you doing tonight?

A little short on time these days, so I’ll leave you with a no-brainer this time around.

The thing about Kate Bush is that she never really stopped being weird. She made it big as a teenager in the late 70s with her melodramatic, gothic, Bronte-inspired hit Wuthering Heights, but did she then fall into the banal pit of superstardom, letting managers and music execs craft her into a predictable and semi-clothed pop star? Oh hells no (though they did try). Dress up like a lion or a bat on your album cover? Sure. Make dog-barking noises in a song? No doubt. Reference Stanley Kubrick, James Joyce, or Wilhelm Reich in your lyrics? Bush has done it.

Here is the video for her 1980 track Army Dreamers, a song which, sadly, will probably never stop being relevant.

Fun fact: It was Bush, not Madonna, who pioneered the headset microphone for live performances, which she did in order to be able to execute full-on interpretive dances during her sets. An innovator after my own heart.

And oh heck, here’s the video for Wuthering Heights, after the cut. This video alone has inspired probably as many fan-imitations as The Numa Numa Dance, and you can see why. When I’m bored I like to watch the dozens of women (and some men) who don red dresses, head out to a field somewhere, and, you know, let their souls fly free.

(more inside…)

Then it must be May Day!

Hazel Dickens is a longtime union supporter and feminist folksinger. She comes from a family of miners in West Virginia, and has lent her voice to the cause of workers’ rights - especially women workers - countless times. She appears in Barbara Kopple’s incredible documentary Harlan Country USA, about a miners’ strike that ended in tragedy, and some of her most powerful songs are collected on the amazing album Coal Mining Women, and are a potent reminder that women have ALWAYS been part of the fight for safe working conditions, shorter hours and decent pay. She also, I should mention, has a voice that could raise the dead (and invariably makes me cry like a babe). Plus, in an industry (the music one, I mean) where youth is god and death may as well occur at 30, it’s really important to remember that there are people out there who have been doing it and doing it well since before you were born, you little pischer. So, as she says in Woman Coal Miner Blues, if you can’t stand by her, don’t stand in her way.

A mystery person (thank you, whoever you are!) has created this fan video featuring Dickens singing union organizer Joe Hill’s song Rebel Girl. It opens with a speech by feminist labour leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the images are all of women involved with the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies). It’s really worth checking out the video’s original source for brief bios of all the women pictured. Powerful stuff. What? No no, I just have something in my eye, that’s all.

I’ve also posted the first half of a video biography of Hazel Dickens after the cut. Happy May Day!
(more inside…)

In my years as a community-radio DJ, I’ve received many a promotional CD for a female artist with that most backhanded of compliments in its promo material: “Not your usual female singer-songwriter”. Okay, I take most music journalism about as seriously as I take Stephen Colbert’s presidential campaign, but this is annoying for so many reasons. What is “your usual female singer-songwriter”, and what’s so bad about that? Did Joni Mitchell really traumatize so many children of baby-boomers that we can no longer conceive of the (extremely broad!) category of female singer-songwriters as anything but derivative and banal? Humph. (Not that I think Joni is derivate and banal. But admittedly she did spawn a legion of copycats who occasionally make me want to poke my ears out.)

Okay. Now that I have that off my chest, here’s my recommendation for this week: Finders Keepers has released a compilation of female singer-songwriters called Bearded Ladies that is anything but banal, gooey, or involving songs about menstruation. What’s nice about this comp is that it seems to have no driving theme other than the unusual and the awesome - the songs date from the 1970s to last year, and the artists are from the USA, France, Turkey, and elsewhere. All the songs could be roughly categorized as folk(ish), but they all decidedly push the boundaries of what can be done with a guitar and a single voice. For instance, Peachtree, the contribution from Lispector (which you can listen to on the Finders Keepers site) is from 2007 but could have come from decades ago, with its 4-track warmth and meandering style.

Other contributors include Turkish protest singer Selda, Wendy & Bonnie, Speck Mountain, and the indescribable Brigitte Fontaine. In fact, I’m not even going to try to describe her. Just watch the video below the cut. Laurie Anderson, eat your heart out.
(more inside…)

To me, nothing says First Day Of Summer (okay, not officially, but have you been outside today?) like Cannonball by The Breeders. Oh, the Deal sisters and their greasy hair. Oh, 1993. Fifteen years and this song still makes me grin like a maniac. This video, incidentally, was directed by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, along with Spike Jonze.