In the Blog

one song for you

July 4th, 2008     by Anna Leventhal     Comments

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?

Tags: picks from planet venus, playlist

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