Sleater-Kinney Coming To Your Neck of The Woods
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Punk-rock trio staging North American trek after May 24 release.
Lollygaggers queuing for nachos during Sleater-Kinney's sets on Pearl Jam's
2003 stadium tour might have asked themselves, "Who is this ferociously loud
chick band?"
Those who took positive notice of the Olympia, Washington, punk-rock trio will
be happy to know their visceral and passionate intensity has carried over to
their new album, The Woods.
And those piqued and yearning for an in-person sonic ass-kicking will be pleased
that the band will hit the road this spring a mere seven days after The Woods is
released on May 24. The trek will kick off in nearby Seattle and finish June 30
in Atlanta.
A loud, raucous album of aggressive psych-rock jams, tempestuous free-form
structures and Jimi Hendrix-like, molten-hot solos, The Woods — the group's
seventh record — is a startling and disarming left turn.
And you can thank Eddie Vedder for that.
Opening up for Pearl Jam on their last tour left an impression on the group.
Outside of playing to enormous, sometimes tepid audiences, it was all about the
newfound acoustics.
"You start to imagine your music in a different way," guitarist/singer Carrie
Brownstein said of playing to huge audiences in stadium-size venues. "You're so
much sonically larger than you're used to. A lot of this record comes out of the
way we were playing live on that tour."
Given the mainstream's current infatuation with all things indie, Sleater could
have easily delivered a friendly record that would give "The O.C." 's Seth Cohen
a new crush. Instead, they provided an unconventional and daring record that
proves they're not afraid of taking risks.
"We just get tired of predictable music," Brownstein said. "We missed the thrill
of turning something on and not knowing what's going to happen next. It's
exciting when something scary, jarring or wrong happens in a song and it just
makes you feel really alive for a moment."
The album was born not only of their goal to shake things up, but from a
self-imposed boot camp that found them retreating to upstate New York with
producer David Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev).
"We were going crazy out there, with the deer hunters and the snowmobilers,"
drummer Janet Weiss laughed. "It's a strange culture, it's not like you can
really escape into your world. There's wild packs of dogs out there [and] you're
really isolated and on edge. All three of us were in this raw space, and [the
record] came out really urgent."
Recorded over five weeks at Fridmann's Tarbox studios, the album takes on a
somber tone reflective of the wilderness. "The woods are a place that is
inherently unadorned, full of depth and beauty and pockets that are really
frightening," singer/guitarist Corin Tucker said. "Musically we wanted to go to
those places and have a title that could house all of the sinister and dark
qualities of the music right now."
Without identifying suspects, Brownstein said current trends in modern rock also
shaped the record to an opposite degree, especially its first single,
"Entertain." "It was written as a response to the watering down of art in our
culture, feeling like it was getting benign," Brownstein said. "I just get
really tired of a lot of retro nostalgia and music that's safe and isn't pushing
a boundary in any way."
Naturally, the upcoming video for "Entertain" follows the dark-forest imagery
and features the band chased by a rabid deer for reasons that are not quite
clear. "We're also driving in a truck, and something happens and it's scary, but
you're not sure why it's supposed to be scary," Weiss said.
As morose as the album's environment is and as miserable as their surroundings
were, the experience was ultimately liberating, according to Brownstein. "The
Woods means coming back from a dark point of near-chaos, disintegration, and on
the journey back, trying to get something positive and illuminating out of it."