Spectreview: Sleater-Kinney – Path of Wellness

Released: June 11, 2021

Rock
(Punk)
(Alternative)

-PURPLE-

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“Could you be a little nicer to me
Could you try a little kindness, maybe
Could you be a little nicer to me
Come on, come on”

There was a time when Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss were some of the coolest people I could imagine. This was when I was a wannabe musician hunkering down in a glorified basement just down the street from the UMass campus and writing ambitious, depressed little ditties on Pro Logic that to this day I refuse to share with anyone. The space of time between your early twenties and your mid twenties is perhaps the last opportunity to be transformed by an artist, and listening to “One Beat” for the first time, in the Home Depot bathroom on an over-extended break, did what so many other contemporaries failed to do. I’d heard about the band in the past just from doing independent research online (after all, Sleater-Kinney might just take the crown as the single most fun band to write about) but hearing all of the parts come together like that – the militaristic drums, then that guitar line, and then finally Tucker’s bleating voice bearing down like an emergency – rearranged me. To this day, Sleater-Kinney remain one of my favorite bands, and one of the only ones that I’ve managed to acquire (up to a point) a complete discography.

The thing that I’m coming to understand, though, is that Sleater-Kinney did such an effective job of transcending their origins that their fans are made up essentially of multiple demarcated groups without a desire to intermingle. There are the diehards, the ones that heard Call The Doctor or Dig Me Out for the first time and decided they would follow these women to the ends of the earth because they spoke directly to them. There are the poseurs, the ones that read NME like it was actually a bible and would follow Sleater-Kinney to the ends of the earth as long as the critics continued to say it was a good idea. There are the louts, the ones who heard The Woods for the first time and fell head over heels for the idea of a band of women who “could rock as hard, if not harder, than the men” (and, let’s face it, you know who you are). And now, for the first time, there are the dispassionate: the NPR listeners, the tourists, the people whose first exposure to the band was their middling 2015 comeback or their misplaced 2019 foray with St. Vincent and whose opinions are largely shaped by the founts of hyperbole issuing forth from the people that once experienced how transgressive Tucker, Brownstein and Weiss could be.

I don’t know where I stand in this hierarchy – if I’m being perfectly honest, I think I fluctuated between the first three at different points amid my personal growth – and it shouldn’t matter, but the reason why it does to me is because it sort of reinforces what I wrote about the band the last time they put something out. Sleater-Kinney were never meant to be a band for all of us. They weren’t just a group of talents with an inimitable alchemy; they were a band of rigorous principles who not only warred but triumphed against a world that generally didn’t want them. Right up until The Woods their progressive Olympia origins never left them, and they earned respect for writing about preemptive wars, queer love, shitty men and the social structures that propped them up way before it was chic.

In a sense, those ten years they spent on hiatus, unwittingly letting their legend gestate, did just as much to sabotage their borrowed image as one of America’s Best Rock Bands as the illusion-shattering No Cities To Love. The decisions made in its wake, from Brownstein’s oversharing memoir to the doomed Annie Clark collab to, finally, the departure of their secret weapon, have spoiled a lot of the goodwill they accrued. What we’re left with is an act that, despite the fact they’ve likely never had more listeners, fewer and fewer people genuinely feel are worth talking about.

Apologies for the overemphasis on exposition, but honestly the worst thing I can say about Path of Wellness is that it’s not really worth writing about. It’s definitely an easier listen than The Center Won’t Hold, but that’s because Tucker and Brownstein are mostly playing it safe here. For all the strange, out-of-character turns the band took on that record, I could credit them for attempting to step outside their comfort zone, as if they were a marriage that needed to be spiced up. I guess it didn’t work based on Weiss’ egress, but you can’t fault a group approaching their twenty-fifth year for trying something new. Path of Wellness, in comparison, find Tucker and Brownstein for the first time failing to turn themselves into something greater than their parts. Here they sound like legacy punks on autopilot mode; one has a guitar, the other has a guitar with the low-end brought out, and the drummer that’s supporting them does their best Weiss impression. No bells and whistles, no current of tense energy, no raison d’etre, just a handful of players working the rounds. It’s not a good sign when the first thing that comes to mind when listening to a Sleater-Kinney record is Wilco.

You could argue that’s an unfair dictate. Age isn’t something you can just stow in the background, try as you might, and indeed there are parts here that suggest Sleater-Kinney could indeed age gracefully. The record’s A-side is its strongest, with a run from the eclectic “Path of Wellness” to the pleasant, homey “Worry With You” to the gently brooding “Method” that do a lot to assuage fears of Tucker and Brownstein losing their natural songwriting gifts. After that it’s a little bit of a crapshoot, with some notable moments (“Shadow Town’s” verse, the slinkiness of “Complex Female Characters”) countered by a good deal of clunkiness (the blasé rock of “Favorite Neighbor” among them) and let down ultimately by an unplaceable sense of deflation. Is it bad that “Bring Mercy” came to a close and I wasn’t even aware the record had ended?

It’s hard not to talk about Path of Wellness without the phantom pain of Weiss’ absence popping in from time to time. It’s not like the remaining duo hide it. Everything from the promo photos to the PR statements to the album art (and even to an extent the title) paint this new record as both a new beginning and a chance to redefine what Sleater-Kinney means. That also means an opportunity, finally, to self-produce entirely. It’s a decent effort (minus the muddiness of “Tomorrow’s Grave’s” vocals), and the band does a good job at making the rotating cast of drummers they hired for the project not stick out too hard. I’m not sure if it could be helped, but an uncanny valley nevertheless forms. It might has to do with the way the drums are produced: dry, soft, inviting but in an uncharacteristic way. The sticking is pleasantly creative, and on occasion (like the title track, for example) you could close your eyes and believe Weiss is back behind the kit, but those moments come few and far between. Though this is now Tucker and Brownstein’s band, their parts sonically hold the same court as the mildly-complex pounding from some unrecognizable performer, and that cuts a little into the image they may want to lead with. For a band that very recently claimed “only together can we break the rules”, it’s too easy for a certain disingenuousness to settle in like a bad taste.

Yet that prickly pain is but one intensely personal angle of the devastation that Tucker and Brownstein attempt to cover across these songs. Considering the meal they made out of the War on Iraq back on One Beat, the disheartening trajectory of 2020 would hypothetically make perfect fodder for a band led by the likes of Corin Tucker. It’s accepted now that Tucker is nowhere near the dissatisfied firebrand she once was; even back on One Beat and The Woods she had to push herself to the brink to get the point across, and two decades later the wind has almost completely left her sails. It’s good that she takes a new tack here instead of trying to force it (every time I attempt a relisten to The Center Won’t Hold I find myself consistently stopping halfway through the first track), but it’s also hard to accept a Corin Tucker whose characteristically excellent lyrics (barring the platitudinous “Bring Mercy”) are hobbled by a voice akin to a fire reduced to lukewarm coals.

That leaves Brownstein, who sort of has the same problem Tucker has: her Jaggeresque preening, so critical to tempering Tucker’s passionate yelp, loses its luster when it’s brought down to a lower temperature. Just as everything else here, she peaks early, channeling Patti Smith on “Path of Wellness” and lending a sense of camaraderie to “Worry With You” while adding a typically brilliant angular guitar line to “High in the Grass” that lifts it up from being the type of colorless mid-tempo rocker that plagues the record’s back half. She also hasn’t lost her lyrical bite either, especially on the surprisingly powerful “Complex Female Characters” (though that itself is undercut by minute-long lead-in “No Knives”, which is in the running for Sleater-Kinney’s worst song yet) and the affecting plea of “Method”. Yet once again those recognizably remarkable qualities fade into the background once the B-side settles in.

I don’t know what else to say. Perhaps it’s a testament to how vital Sleater-Kinney used to be that I find this new record so unremarkable. There’s something to be said about avoiding the risk of experimenting (although I can’t help but do that annoying thing where I envision an alternate reality in which Tucker and Brownstein radically reimagine themselves as a drummer-less act, like Body/Head), and when it comes down to it Path of Wellness has plenty of good qualities that might make it a comfy repeat listen, but the point of Sleater-Kinney is that you don’t go to Sleater-Kinney for comfy listens. You go to gets your guts rearranged, to learn about the world while finding the strength to push its weight off of your shoulders. That, at least, was the point of the Sleater-Kinney I grew to admire; therein it’s revealed finally that the problem must lay with me. If a path of wellness involves getting back in the game preemptively while making that sweet Amazon moolah, more power to you.

Recommended, but with a lingering dissatisfaction.