An Ode to Sleater-Kinney Issue #29

Critics, musicians, and fans remember the legendary trio from their Olympia explosion to their amicable breakup

By Mairead Case
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

If you grew up in the Pacific Northwest, you might know the exit better than the band. It’s an ordinary green and white sign, stuck in the shoulder of I-5 in Lacey, Washington, and it was there long before Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Lora MacFarlane (later to be replaced by Janet Weiss) named their band: Sleater-Kinney.

If you were a certain kind of kid, all the sign meant was “We’re in Lacey, time for some pie.” But if you were another, those two white words conjured an onslaught of words and guitar, sexy-strong dexterity, and validation of the Other, be she “too” young, “too” queer, or “too” angry. And if the Other was You, Sleater-Kinney songs were a lifesaver and dance party in one.

Put another way, when I broke up with Sonic Youth Boy, I couldn’t stomach wearing the Sleater-Kinney shirt he’d given me. But I couldn’t give it away, either, and I certainly couldn’t cut it up — it was Sleater-Kinney! The monkey one! Instead, I gave it to my little sister. She still wears it.

In June, Sleater-Kinney announced an “indefinite hiatus.” “But you can say they’re broken up,” says Joan Hiller, a publicist for the trio’s record label, Sub Pop. “They just wanted people to know that they’re still friends.”

That, I think, is the most amazing part: not the seven albums in 10 years, or the way the indie press calls these women by their first names as others do Nick and Jessica, but the fact that Carrie, Corin, and Janet are still friendly. Even Metallica can’t say that, and they went to therapy.

Really, and despite the über radness of David Lasky’s D.C.-esque drawing, it’s important to remember that Sleater-Kinney are actual people, too. It’s time to move on, for the sake of lives, art, and Marshall Tucker, Corin’s young son. Venus Zine wishes everyone luck and lovely things, but first, we raise this verbal Zippo of testimonials from friends, fans, and fellow performers. Still, I’m sure I’ll always get a lump in the throat whenever I drive through Lacey. Thanks, ladies.

ANN POWERS
L.A. TIMES MUSIC CRITIC, AUTHOR OF Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, co-editor of Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, and co-author of Piece By Piece with Tori Amos
I didn't like Sleater-Kinney at first. It was a knee-jerk reaction, believe it or not, to the fact that the male rock writers in my life were so hyped on them. [Music critics Robert] Christgau and [Greil] Marcus had embraced Call the Doctor with a bear hug the size of the patriarchy, and though I loved and trusted them, their enthusiasm kind of freaked me out. Not to mention my mate, Eric Weisbard, was all worked up about Corin's voice and Carrie's guitar, and I guess maybe I was a little jealous.

What a fool I was. By the time Dig Me Out came along in 1997, I'd created enough personal listening space to really hear the band's immense achievement: the translation of women's discourse, both internal and shared, into the miraculous substance called rocknroll. Just like the films of Chantal Akerman, the poetry of Adrienne Rich, the art of Lorna Simpson, or the conceptual smorgasbord of Yoko Ono, Sleater-Kinney's music intervenes into male-dominated language and explodes a space for the language or women's desire. It's profound, it's rigorous, it makes you sweat and smile. Plus by Dig Me Out, they had this great drummer who made the concepts stick like crazy glue.

Now they're gone. How can that be? I have a daughter; she's gonna need them. But these three women all have their own stellar futures to cultivate. I'll watch and hope for much from each of them. And I'll tell my daughter about Sleater-Kinney live: Carrie windmilling her guitar, Corin vocalizing beyond what seemed humanly possible, Janet pummeling the guts of the atmosphere with every kick and roll. I'll tell her, because that's how women's history stays alive. And I'll hope for a reunion in a decade or so, when Bebe Brooklyn Weisbard will be old enough to go.

LIZZIE EHRENHALT
OF POGOPRINCESS.BLOGSPOT.COM
There's a template for feminists trying to make music in the rock idiom: strategic amateurism. Following in the footsteps of the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Bands, groups like the Slits, the Raincoats, and Bikini Kill rejected the masculinist imperative to "master" rock instruments and instead embraced non-rock arrangements, chaotic live improvisation, and a certain amount of sloppiness. This is a brilliant strategy for critiquing sexist assumptions about the rock star as gifted boy genius and hero, but it's also a limiting one for women who want to more completely recuperate those roles.

Even though Sleater-Kinney came out of punk, by their third album, Dig Me Out, they had mastered their instruments in the traditional way, displaying a technical virtuosity not normally associated with women. Because they fused this skill with feminist politics and a healthy skepticism about the rock establishment, they inhabited, parodied, and reclaimed the rock-star image for women. They also offered a method of resistance outside Raincoats-style amateurism and proved that XY genes don't have a monopoly on expertise — or whammy bars.

DAN AUERBACH
SINGER AND GUITARIST OF THE BLACK KEYS
We were a small band, and we weren’t making a lot of money, so after the show, Sleater-Kinney would always tip us out — from their own pockets. Then, Janet and I would be pool sharks for a while. She thinks she’s better than me, but once I saw her poke herself in the eye with a pool cue.

SLIM MOON
OWNER OF KILL ROCK STARS RECORDS, SLEATER-KINNEY’S LONGTIME LABEL
I passed on their first album because Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17 already existed, and my impression was that Sleater-Kinney was a side project. When they left Chainsaw, they could have had hurt feelings, but they gave us a second shot. I always appreciated that.

NOMY LAMM
MUSICIAN, COLUMNIST, AND ZINE PUBLISHER
I remember thinking it was a kind of stupid name. Sleater-Kinney is a street in Lacey that the mall and the Fred Meyer are on. Not a very interesting area. I thought, "Well, that name will never go far." Haha.

I first saw them at a benefit for Safeplace that had about 10 or 15 people there. I remember my friends going, "Hey, this is the perfect rhythm for the tush push," and busting out a line dance.

I didn't see them for a few years after that, and then I got a ride with them to Dirty Bird, this queer punk gathering in San Francisco. I remember this huge dragonfly got caught in the windshield wipers on the way down.

I was so shocked when I saw them at Gilman Street [in Berkeley]. The venue was packed, and Carrie was such a rock star. I didn't realize how popular they had gotten, and I didn't know she had those kicks and windmills and shit in her.

Our grandmas knew each other, so my grandma would always give me updates — "Your friend Carrie graduated from college" — and send me clippings of articles about Sleater-Kinney. The last time I saw them was when they first came to Chicago after The Woods came out. [Carrie] told me her grandma had called her when my grandma died, which was sweet.

My friend Shira told Carrie that her guitar solo made her all verklempt. It was pretty impressive, I have to say, for a queer girl to be able to hold that kind of attention and channel that kind of rock energy in such an authentic way.

ASYA
VOCALIST AND PIANIST OF SMOOSH
Sleater-Kinney is definitely one of the most inspiring bands to me. I wrote the song “Massive Cure” after we played with them, because I loved it how they rocked out so much and were so confident onstage. I just love their style of music. Also, Chloe has been inspired by Janet's drumming. They were super nice and supportive to us. We had so much fun playing a show with them.

CHLOE
DRUMMER OF SMOOSH
I try to make some of my drumbeats kind of like Janet’s, ’cause she used the toms a lot and it sounded real cool. And they were all really nice.

EMMY HENNINGS OF FANGRRRL.BLOGSPOT.COM
I saw Sleater-Kinney play just three times out here in Australia, but each time was life-affirming. By which I don’t mean: I walked out with arms aloft thinking that the world was a marvellous place. By which I do mean: I (re)remembered that ways of living are worth fighting for. Each show gave me new energy: to paint banners, to march down the street, to climb buildings at midnight, to write, to talk, and to remake the world in small ways.

The last show was in Melbourne just six months ago, and they sure didn’t sound on the verge of breaking up. “The Fox” was a great rusting riverbank of sound; a spontaneous “Youth Decay” ripped holes in itself three times faster than you’d ever think possible; the dissolution of “Let’s Call It Love” was reshaped around Janet Weiss’s martial beat for an “Entertainment” of jaw-cracking ferocity. Weiss hit and Tucker grimaced and Brownstein strutted. Arm in arm I danced with one of my dearest friends; danced so hard that it was close to obnoxious.

And maybe men and boys feel this more often — this sense that a band and their performance has not only affirmed who they are but has shown who they might be, if they dared. Enlargement, joy and glory, a feeling of a new or at least a rediscovered space: it’s what rock music is about. For the boys.

Sleater-Kinney reaffirmed for me time and time again the power — and the possibility — of angry womanhood. An angry woman is still a great taboo (bitch, hysteric, dyke) and few women are prepared to make it public. On record and especially in concert, Sleater-Kinney made their anger a celebration as much as anything else, and the celebration gave their listeners a sense of what might be possible. Theirs was a confrontational, engaged, inclusive feminism: a way of living worth fighting for.

SARA SHERR
WRITER AND MEMBER OF DUMPSTA PLAYAS
A decade ago, Sleater-Kinney kicked a hole in the uptight indie-rock boy scene, and I was grateful that someone was playing my rocknroll, my Joey Ramone. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Between the bland blog rock and the new wave of new wave, it's largely a boys club, and girls are relegated to Internet urban pin-ups instead of being onstage. Karen O recently told Bust magazine that she wishes she had more female peers. I hope all the girls who sang along to "Words and Guitar" at tonight's Philadelphia show [on July 31, 2006] will carry the torch with their own words and guitars. We need them now, more than ever.

MIKE APPELSTEIN
WRITER AND JACK OF ALL TRADES
I am a Sleater-Kinney fan in general, but the early releases — everything up to and including Call The Doctor — are the ones that still send chills down my spine. Credit really ought to be given to Australian drummer Lora MacFarlane for helping make those initial albums what they were. She comes across on these recordings like a post-riot grrrl Palmolive: her fluid, bobbing-and-weaving drumming style perfectly matched the tension and wracked emotions of those initial songs.
That Lora left so early in Sleater-Kinney's career is no surprise: it must have been hard to schedule rehearsals and tours when your band is scattered across two continents. But Corin and Carrie were going in a more streamlined and anthemic direction by that point anyway, and Janet Weiss was and is the perfect drummer for that approach. Ultimately everyone won: Sleater-Kinney rode a decade-long hot streak, Lora pursued a more experimental approach with ninetynine, and we listeners have gotten to follow two great bands as they grow in different but equally compelling directions.

AMY PHILLIPS
PITCHFORK NEWS EDITOR
We Jewish girls don't have too many rocknroll role models. So at age 15 in 1996, when I first heard Sleater-Kinney, I was overjoyed to discover that the band included women named Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss. Sounded like people I'd buy bat mitzvah gifts for. Even better — they didn't play klezmer or Israeli folk songs or Billy Joel ballads. They rocked, hard, in a seemingly effortless, organic way, guitars and voices intertwining like I'd never experienced before.

Due to various circumstances (being underage, nobody wanted to drive me, the band canceled, etc.), I didn't get to experience Sleater-Kinney live until 1998. I don’t remember much about it, other than that one of my other favorite bands, Helium, opened and apparently joined S-K onstage for an encore, but I missed that part because it had occurred after 11 p.m., which was when Mom had picked me up.

Two years later, in 2000, I saw Sleater-Kinney again, this time with the Gossip and the Butchies opening. I was out of the house and in college by then, so I was able to stay as late as I wanted at the show. For the encore, all three bands joined together for a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son," in honor of the Republican National Convention taking place in Philadelphia that summer.

I still remember that cover. It, too, was effortless and organic, guitars and voices intertwining like I'd never experienced before. Pure punk rock protest, communal catharsis, feminine rage. Four years after that, watching John Fogerty himself perform "Fortunate Son" with Bruce Springsteen in a sports arena during the 2004 pre-election Vote for Change Tour, I couldn't help but think: this pales in comparison.

BECKY SMITH
OF DEEPFRYMYCHEVY.BLOGSPOT.COM
Sleater-Kinney: the base of my friendships, the symbolic core of my community. In high school, we sang along with “Little Babies,” drove aimlessly around the small Midwestern farming town and did not realize we were still babies ourselves. We watched the underage girls drink beer out of the back of pick-ups with men who knew no age boundaries, and yelled “You’re no rocknroll fun” to the gathering of goth kids who thought they were vampires.

A few years later, we were sitting on the El in Chicago, filled with rage. The only thing that could pacify us was “A Real Man.” In March, as we drove around Columbia, you said, “You be Corin, I’ll be Carrie.” I tried and ended up singing Carrie’s part along with you. “You can’t do a round!” I convinced you that we should try again, Carrie I could handle but Corin was just out of my reach. “Backwards, forwards, backwards,” I half remembered the words and then told you to put on my teenage jam. We were in the Famous Barr parking lot singing, “Is there splendor? I'm not ashamed,” when I looked over at you and realized that you are my family.

When we heard the news, that there would be no new beats, we gathered in their living room, turned the stereo up as loud as possible and asked the question that was such a sucker-punch, as they were leaving in less than a month. “Why do good things never wanna stay?”