Sleater-Kinney's 'The Woods': Dark and Deep
By Joe Heim
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 29, 2005; Page N05
It seems not much of a stretch to interpret the title of Sleater-Kinney's new album, "The Woods," as a metaphor for the uncertain times in which we live. If getting out of the woods means finally reaching safety, then being lost deep in them can be worrisome, even cause for panic. There's little on this 10-song CD, the band's loudest, hardest, thrashingest effort yet, to suggest that Sleater-Kinney senses less-troubled days anytime soon.
Beginning with the sonic roar that kicks off the first song, "The Fox" -- a fierce post-rock parable -- "The Woods" is a blistering work of strategic venom, artful despair and unbridled, unflinching passion. It is angry and caustic, exciting and unnerving. It is sweeping in scope. It rocks like nothing you've heard in years.
Guitarists and vocalists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss are the three women, along with producer Dave Fridmann, responsible for this 45-minute maelstrom of sound and ideas. The band's first release on Sub Pop, after years on the independent label Kill Rock Stars, is nothing less than its strongest start-to-finish album. For a group with several unimpeachable, time-tested releases already, that is no slight accomplishment.
Weiss is a brazen and aggressive drummer, heroic even. And Brownstein still plays guitar like she is chain-sawing through power lines. But a full decade into their career, it remains Tucker's ululating, otherworldly warble that most distinguishes Sleater-Kinney songs. An instrument all its own, her freaky vibrato is distress signal, call to arms and ward against evil all at once.
On the scathing "Wilderness," about both a couple and a country, she howls, "We're split right in half / It's making me crazy / A two-headed brat / Tied to the other for life." And on the Zeppelinesque "Let's Call It Love," an 11-minute hurricane-force rocker, her voice is equal to threats like "Show me your darkest side / And you better be my bloody match." Brownstein, too, takes her shots. On "Entertain," a blast at those simply rehashing art and music styles, she snarls: "You come around sounding 1972 / You did nothing new with 1972 / Where is the [expletive] you? / Where is the black and blue?"
Only on the sardonic "Modern Girl" does Sleater-Kinney throttle back its all-out rock approach. Sung by Brownstein, the deceptively gentle and melodic pop song reveals its fangs in increasingly bitter lyrics about unfulfilling lives and the emptiness of a culture in which everything is for sale.
There is little evidence of optimism in the other songs either: "Jumpers" is a tale of suicide; "Rollercoaster" frets about relationship stability; "Steep Air" growls at the status quo. By the final song, "Night Light," the pressures seem almost overbearing, and perhaps that is why it allows an admission of uncertainty and includes pleas for direction and purpose. "How do you do it?" Tucker sings. "This bitter and bloody world / Keep it together and shine for your family. How do you do it?"
Once again, Sleater-Kinney asks all the right questions. All the questions the times demand. We're not out of the woods yet. Not even close.
