Watch out, Wilco fans, it looks like we have another contender for best album of 2002 (Bruce Springsteen notwithstanding). Back from a two-year hiatus, the three ladies of Sleater-Kinney have just released their best album yet. And considering that their previous albums are all pretty delicious, that means quite a lot.
"One Beat" is the band's fifth release. After a successful but unsatisfying (for me, at least) venture into poppier territory with 2000's "All Hands on the Bad One," Sleater-Kinney has put out its second seminal album. Yes, kids, "One Beat" meets and exceeds the divinity of "Dig Me Out" (1997), the band's sophomore release and its first career-making album. All of this was no doubt due to the addition of drummer Janet Weiss -- she's sensational, she really is.
The other founding members of Sleater-Kinney are Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein. When she's not fronting as femme fatale, Tucker sings like a wench begging for more, her voice quivering with desire, dripping with desperation, its shrillness neutralized by Brownstein's cool harmonies and fast-paced alternate choruses. As songwriting collaborators, they're hard to beat, especially this time around. With the sensational Weiss driving the beats, the sound bounces, buzzes and won't take no for an answer. On "One Beat," both the guitar work and Weiss' drum work have grown in intricacy and command.
There are no insta-classic singalongs like "I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone" on the new album. Feel free to cry them a river, but you'll be happy to discover that what is lost has been replaced by less polished, more intense songs with well thought out, more provocative lyrics.
The overt lyrical eroticism of earlier Sleater-Kinney is all but gone, with traces left only in Tucker's wails. Can't blame 'em, they're getting older, more mature. I never thought I'd hear a Sleater-Kinney song about motherhood ("Sympathy"); then again, I never thought I'd hear Ani DiFranco wax on, wax off about marriage, but she has since spent practically two whole discs on it ("Revelling/Reckoning"). I digress.
Sonically, some interesting things happen on "One Beat:" new instruments! There are horns and strings, synthesizers, keyboards, theramin and guest vocals by Stephen Trask, best known for his work on the musical score of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." None of these additional sounds intrude on Sleater-Kinney's bare-boned drums-and-guitar approach. Rather, the result is a sound with great depth meant to be listened to at top volume.
The album is a less upbeat, less fun endeavor than typical, but with reason -- there's unpleasant stuff to deal with. "Far Away" describes the morning of Sept. 11, while "Combat Rock" describes the aftermath with clipped, indignant vocals: "Since when is skepticism un-American? / Dissent's not treason but they talk like it's the same."
Although Sleater-Kinney has never been and still isn't longwinded, songs like "The Remainder" and "Funeral Song" easily reach epic status with sweeping choruses and emotion-ridden vocals. Drums and electric guitar hammer "Funeral Song" into a punk rock dirge for love gone wrong; "The Remainder" plods along nonchalantly before unleashing sudden power after the first verse.
The raucous "Step Aside" is sure to become a rock n' roll anthem, demanding us to "get your feet on the floor / move it up one time TO THE BEAT," while at the same time calling for action to "disassemble the discrimination," all in the midst of a trumpet and two saxes blaring.
Lyrically, the band has come far from their old trick of repeating catchy verses repeatedly. Tucker and Brownstein aren't Lennon and McCartney, but with Sleater-Kinney, it's all about delivery. These girls have something to say, and they'll deliver it with braggadocio, yowls, snarls, whatever the song calls for.
Too bad "Prisstina" went and messed it all up -- the album could have had it made without this one. But "Prisstina," a trite, juvenile song about "a very good girl / Did all her homework in school," doesn't fit here at all. It belongs on an earlier, more immature album, not on their most grown up album to date.
"One Beat" is not so much a departure as a furtherance. Brownstein has described this album as Sleater-Kinney's most experimental. While some musicians let the experimentation revise the band, Sleater-Kinney uses it to revise the music: a touch here, a touch there, the album's done and the album's great.
Grade: 4.5 stars
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