Spectreview: Sleater-Kinney – The Center Won’t Hold

-SPRING GREEN-

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“Tired of bein’ told that this should be the end
But fighting is the fuel and anger is a friend
There’s nothing more frightening and nothing more obscene
Than a well-worn body demanding to be seen”

Once upon a time, the duo of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein (and later addition of vital drummer Janet Weiss) singularly carried the fire of their diehards, the repressed and patronized that understood how a dignified career in rock music as a woman in the 90’s wasn’t anything but a losing game. Sleater-Kinney at the core are not, and have never been, a populist band. Theirs has long been the road of resistance, fighting against the sexism ingrained in American culture and challenging the limitations of being a woman playing male-dominated music. Even if the legwork had already been done by the time they became underground heroes, there were still hurdles to clear, obstacles to overcome. But they pulled it off because, over everything, the music they played embodied the righteous fight they waged. Not everyone could align with that wavelength, but therein lay the band’s vitality. When renowned Time reviewer Greil Marcus declared them “America’s best rock band” back in 2001, it was as if a light had suddenly flicked on: suddenly, you had to care about this band. They were the best, according to this one powerful person: better than (and, by extension, infinitely comparable to) any other rock act. What was once a band to be discovered by the few is now a band to be taken for granted by the many.

Not that this was ever a malicious act on the critical end. Critics understood why this band mattered, but more importantly, they wanted it to matter. They wanted the world to change because, somewhere over the last 15 years, the role of the professional critic switched from consumer’s guide (a la Robert Christgau) to storyteller. The power of the critic depreciated inverse to the rising power of the music industry’s marketing force, and over time the word of writers like Sheffield and Erlewine mattered nought if the label could just force the consumer to listen to its product. Music’s resonance is rooted in any given individual’s subjectivity, but no one can argue with the occurrence of well-documented events (at least, no one used to be able to). Gradually, critics transitioned from covering the music to the story, to comparing music to comparing stories, to finally chaining the worth of the music to the worth of the story. This was not an inherently bad thing back when we didn’t take it for granted, as compelling backgrounds often add an entire dimension to an artist’s music. Dizzee Rascal’s past as a scared, self-aware teenage thug on the streets of south London rose the stakes of Boy In Da Corner; Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is as much a document of inter-band strife as a golden example of 70’s pop-rock; Wilco’s struggles with the music industry and subsequent embracing of the nascent Internet made you want to appreciate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot even more. But the story is simply necessary now. It’s what’s easily marketable, it’s what jumps off the page in a press release and a one-sheet. Artists, especially those of a certain clout, are now responsible for constructing a backstory as much as they are responsible for writing and producing the actual music. And if you’re big enough, don’t worry: the story will happen without you even trying.

The story behind The Center Won’t Hold, in case you haven’t been following it, is this: Sleater-Kinney wants to add another direction their sound, Weiss suggests taking on Annie Clark of subversive indie act St. Vincent as a producer, the band does the songwriting long-distance for the first time, Weiss leaves the band a month before the album drops citing this “new direction” as the impetus, and Brownstein and Tucker are back to a rotating drummer lineup for the first time in almost 25 years. Oh, and Brownstein and Clark used to date at one point. It’s an interesting story, isn’t it? No doubt you’ve heard all about the nitty-gritty in your news feed and formulated your own advance opinions on this new direction. No matter what we may think about this new sound, it’s an act of bravery to know what your fans are expecting and decide to buck the trend completely. Of course, no one can expect any musical act to want to continue working in the same style for decades, and Sleater-Kinney have proven themselves to be as ferociously experimental a band as any, with consistently stupendous results. 1998’s The Hot Rock replaced irrepressible fire with twisted, cooled art-punk. 2005’s The Woods is arguably their finest moment, a immersive noise bath in bombastic, revisionist classic rock that still ranks as one of the best albums of the 2000s.

The Center Won’t Hold doesn’t sound like anything Sleater-Kinney’s done before, but you can definitely still tell that it’s still Sleater-Kinney behind the album. The guitar melodies on “The Future is Here” and “Reach Out,” the polemic lyrics, Corin Tucker’s iconic vocals: there’s enough here to signify that the band hasn’t flat-out capitulated to Clark’s aesthetic. But there’s also enough missing to make the argument that this direction is a swerve off the road for a band that found immense success through a very specific set of parts, not the least of which is Janet Weiss’ drumming. Janet’s long been the unsung hero of the band, filling out any given composition with a drum part that makes perfect sense in context. You can’t imagine “Dig Me Out” having nearly the same power without those tom-snare acrobatics, nor “Entertain” with just a straightforward four-to-the-floor beat. Yet one can imagine her decision to leave the band may have been a direct response to her role here, where so many of her parts are reduced to basic 4/4 patterns (when they’re not replaced entirely by drum machines). It’s easy to understand wanting to change it up when you’ve been drumming professionally for decades and you know you’ll have to deal with the forced simplicity of these parts all next tour. There are tiny flashes of her usual brilliance, small places where she tried her best to add her signature, but by and large you could be convinced that Weiss didn’t actually drum on this record, and Sleater-Kinney isn’t “Sleater-Kinney” without Janet.

As far as the musicality of the record, it might come down to how much you appreciate Clark’s synthetic wonderlands, because like Dave Fridmann before her, her presence as a guiding hand is unmistakable. Collaborations can sometimes bring out the best in both parties, but that’s a precarious kind of alchemy especially when both parties carry such a unique sound, and it’s hard not to listen to The Center Won’t Hold and feel like you’re occasionally listening to oil and water mixing. There are enough successful moments where the choice of producer is justified, but perhaps it needed a rebalancing in either direction. “Restless” is the only track here that feels like anything resembling classic Sleater-Kinney, and despite feeling more like a relinquishment than a bold inclusion, it’s a breath a fresh air to hear Brownstein’s voice in its natural habitat. On the other side, some of the album’s worst moments come when the band tries to jump back into its own skin (like the terribly cheesy distortion breakdown on the opening title track) while some of its best are truly new moments for the trio, like the affirming origin story of “LOVE” or the batshit-crazy Arcade Fire-ish “The Dog/The Body” that really ought not to work as well as it does. Its also quite possible that, like any legacy punk band, age has taken its toll. These songs are mostly downtempo and lack an overall energy, and even though that may have more to do with the songwriting than the band’s limitations, it’s a noticeable loss. Tucker’s live-wire vocals don’t have that kind of youthful power anymore, and she instead commits to a thin blues yelp that has its moments, like on the heartbreaking closer “Broken,” but otherwise isn’t nearly as affecting. Brownstein, meanwhile, seems to take the lead vocalist role here for the first time ever, and while she’s never been a traditionally skilled singer, she frequently contributed a grounding presence to Tucker’s soar, and that mixing was a key component in the founding of Sleater-Kinney’s unique power. She happens to take the spotlight here on songs that require a more conventional vocal performance: her evolution to full-on Tom Verlaine vocals by 2002’s One Beat worked well when the music grounded that punk affectation, but even on their most fitting iteration on lead single “Hurry On Home,” they bear this abrasive, preening quality that grinds against her self-loathing lyrics.

Here’s the inconvenient truth about Sleater-Kinney in 2019: they earned that moniker as “America’s best rock band” not only because their music was wholly original and strange and honest, but also because it was 2001 and they still harbored this potential that maybe, just maybe, they could still reach this higher plane of existence and the music they were making could spread across the land and convert all the non-believers, the misogynists and the homophobes and the art-undamaged. The irony is now that they’ve indeed hit that point, they’ve become a well-regarded dinosaur act, a relic of a different time. They should absolutely be respected for their role in fashioning the current status of indie-rock as a genre predominantly led by marginalized voices, but a base level they’ve simply lost their vitality. It’s really, really unfortunate, but there’s just parts of this band’s visceral appeal that have dissipated with longevity, and on The Center Won’t Hold those parts aren’t evenly compensated by the wild change in style. It’s not a resounding failure by any means, and there are tons of moments on the record that prove Sleater-Kinney have the potential to continue making stellar music. Hopefully Tucker and Brownstein continue to do so with a different drummer, but the torch has already been passed, and the light is fading.

Recommended for getting out of Lacey.