6^2002
MUSIC
One more beat
by
C hristopher M c Q uain
Sleater-Kinney’s* latest
tweaks your conditioned
response to pop
ts for Home & Life
From left, Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss, Carrie Brownstein and Corin
Tucker will promote One Beat Sept. 27 at the Crystal Ballroom
leater-Kinney, the now completely Port-
land-based rock phenomenon declared
“the best hand in America” by Time mag
azine, has become almost burdened by
such grand acclaim. Their rock band status and
accompanying ballyh(X) have grown exponen
tially during their seven-year career into an
unmistakable roar that buzz-weary detractors
have used as an excuse to dismiss them.
Nearly everyone in RockCriticLand, includ
ing respected “rock scholar” Greil Marcus, are
taken to at least some degree with the heroic
pop-punk-rock trio of Carrie Brownstein (gui
tar, vox), Corin Tucker (guitar, vox) and Janet
Weiss (drums, background vox).
The hand also has a huge queer following;
they’re painstakingly progressive in politics sex
ual and otherwise, they released their first two
records on Portland dyke-run label Chainsaw,
and Brownstein and Tucker were once roman
tically attached. There is also, of course, the
unarguably sexy charisma these women project
from the stage, which, in the tradition of all
great performers, seems to cross gender/orienta-
tion lines effortlessly.
One need only throw on any of Sleater-
Kinney’s truly original and exceptional albums
to forget the loud hype and asinine backlash
and to hear only the tremendous creative
appeal— the freshness, passion, tension and
personality that are the hallmarks of great
pop-rock music.
S
ne Beat, S-K ’s new album, is a particularly
adventurous, forward-looking collection.
While retaining the hold hi-fi production
values of 2000’s All Hands on the Bad One — with
Tucker and Brownstein’s beautifully recorded
voices high in the mix and a judiciously applied
array of charming, impressive vocal and key
board effects— the group’s sixth C D is more
abstract overall, less straightforward.
The secret ingredient leavening S-K ’s
immediately apparent power-chord-brandishing
rock ’n’ roll swagger is what sounds to he a
deep admiration of European art schtxil post-
punkers of the early ’80s— hands like the Slits,
the Raincoats, LiLiPUT and Gang of Four who
made polyrhythmic, angular, expansive punk-
derived pop and refused to disstx:iate the per
sonal and the political. They deliberately sub
verted angry-boy’s-club convention in pursuit
of more eccentric musical pleasures, and
they’ve been there from the beginning in
Brownstein and Tucker’s unconventionally
hassless double guitar arsenal and often subtly
skewed song structure. But One Beat wears
those influences on its sleeve.
That doesn’t mean there’s any paucity of
propulsion or melody. Each song is a delicately
apportioned collection of overlapping h(X)ks,
O
stopping and start
ing in odd places
only to come rush
ing hack full force.
It’s the verse-chorus-verse pop formula we all
know and love, hut times 10 and out of order,
tricking the senses and tweaking our condi
tioned responses to pop grammar.
This approach turns each track into a grab
bag of sonic treats that run from tart to salty to
sweet, often all inside the same three minutes.
The strident, martial persistence of the title
tune’s roiling rhythm track buoys contrasting
guitar and vocal melodies; Brownstein sings,
“Take me to the source of chaos, let me be the
butterfly,” simultaneously invoking the chaos
theory of physics and lyrically foreshadowing
the rest of the album’s playful meld of rough
and delicate tones and textures, most striking
on “The Remainder,” “Light Rail Coyote” and
“0 2 . ” (“Coyote,” a well-considered hometown
tribute, will make any native Portlander laugh
with recognition and beam with pride.)
“Faraway” is Tucker’s impassioned journal of
initial reactions to the horror of Sept. 11: “And
the president hides/While working men rush
in/And give their lives.” “Combat Rock” wryly
addresses the disconcerting political and cultur
al aftermath, with Brownstein— proficiently
mcxlulating her voice into an elastic, delight
fully artificial signifier— querying, “Where is
the questioning, where is the protest song,” and
sardonically observing of “patriotic" con
sumerism run amok: “Red-white-blue hot pants
doin’ it for Uncle Sam.”
Then there are the songs that just go to
prove S-K can conquer any pop or rock style
they choose. There’s the strutting grooviness of
“Step Aside,” a perfect Motown-style anthem
o f peace, love and empowerment, complete
with horns, that reveals Tucker’s voice to be
that of a horn soul singer. And there’s Brown
stein’s overpoweringly tuneful, pressure-heated
love-gone-wrong “Funeral Song,” along with
the crystallized new wave of “Prisstina” and the
postmodern blues of “Sympathy.”
One Beat confirms Sleater-Kinney’s hard-
earned status as the kept promise incarnate of
utopian American underground-rock idealism.
They’ve done it their way without exception,
they’ve made it on their own terms with an
inimitable combination of skills and smarts,
and they continue to transform themselves into
an increasingly prominent cultural force th a t'
can, at will, recast virtually all pop/rock music
in its own image.
That’s a lot to do, and Portland is just damn
lucky they’ve decided to do it here. JH
C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland-hut-soon-
to-be-Seattle free-lance arts writer.
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