Sleater Kinney / Wild Flag / Quasi / related bands

[kreng]

Heard from a local friend that she broke her collarbone & a leg. Feel terrible for her.

I guess your local friend follows her on Instagram too...

[swan]

Vinyl arrived today. About to go on the turntable!

[epilogue]

Vinyl arrived today. About to go on the turntable!

Jealous

[digster]

I was hoping this was streaming at midnight, alas. With all the extraneous drama surrounding its release, I'm definitely interested to hear what this record's really like.

[verb_to_trust]

I'm listening now

[VinylGuy]

Listening now.

Damn, The Centre Wont Hold and Hurry On Home back to back are fucking A.

The guitars

[tragabigzanda]

[verb_to_trust]

I could do without LOVE and Broken. Broken is especially embarrassing. The Dog/The Body has a really big chorus and is the standout track.

[Monkey_Driven]

I look forward to giving this a spin tonight on my walk.

[verb_to_trust]

I look forward to giving this a spin tonight on my walk.

May I suggest a mall?

[Leatherhead]

I could do without LOVE and Broken. Broken is especially embarrassing. The Dog/The Body has a really big chorus and is the standout track.

What could possibly be embarrassing about Broken? You're crazy. It sounds great.

[Leatherhead]

I'm kinda loving that this album is such a divisive one, but then finding myself scoff whenever I read somebody not liking something about it.

[digster]

So, unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts on the record.

I think it's probably my least favorite since the S/T. I don't think that really speaks to anything defective about this record per se as opposed to the strength of their catalog. One thing that's clear is that people (and some reviewers) have let the narrative of this record overwhelm the actual songs on here. This album sounds nothing like a Sleater-Kinney record, but it doesn't sound anything like a push for pop relevance (like I don't think there's a strong Top 40 call for Sleater-Kinney writing a Tom Petty song, as 'The Dog/The Body' is).

Nor does this record sound anything like a St. Vincent record. I wonder if people were partially hoodwinked by the release of Hurry On Home as the first single, which is the song with the most overt St. Vincent production touches. But stuff like Restless, Bad Dance, Love, Broken, The Dog/The Body doesn't sound anything like Annie Clark. It's been a good barometer of how the music press can sometimes let narrative overwhelm what they're actually writing about.

And for the music, it's clearly their Experimental album with a capital E. Some of it works brilliantly, and some of it falls on its face. It's funny how much of the record is not a 'synth-pop' experiment; there's the unadorned songs like Restless and Broken, odd pop like Bad Dance and The Dog, along with synth workouts like Ruins and Reach Out. More than Janet's drumming, the most significant missing sound in this record is Carrie's guitar. She has an extremely distinctive guitar style that really isn't present (which, in listening to the album, makes sense; this is clearly the album where Carrie wants to fuck around with anything but guitar).

Right now, I'm drawn to a lot of the songs on the back half that were panned prior to release, including Love and Bad Dance. It's an often maddening album, but a lot of it's rewarding, and I think it will age better after it's out of the context of its release. People were saying these would be a masterpiece or a disaster, and it's neither.

[tragabigzanda]

Top 10 maybe?
Hello Morning
Close Captioned
The Kill
Place/Position
Do You Like Me?
Latest Disgrace
Recap Modotti
Nightshop
Break
Life & Limb

I'd maybe bump Life & Limb for Epic Problem

[verb_to_trust]

I could do without LOVE and Broken. Broken is especially embarrassing. The Dog/The Body has a really big chorus and is the standout track.

What could possibly be embarrassing about Broken? You're crazy. It sounds great.

I don't know. The whole album isnt where I would have guessed what a 44 year old Carrie would sound like at this point.

[digster]

That’s a good review that makes me want to give this thing a chance

I think people's interest in the record (or patience for it) will generally fall onto whether you can find things to like in a record where their ambition sometimes reaches further than their grasp. I really enjoy those kinds of records, but already I'm not sure the songwriting's going to hold up quite as well as some of their other albums (and it's not surprising that they wrote this separately; some of the songs do sound stitched together).

[Leatherhead]

RUINS is fuckin' awesome.

edit: even better the second time.

[Leatherhead]

Bad Dance.

[digster]

Everyone seems to hate that song, it may be one of my favorites on here.

I do like the contrast between music and lyrics; some of the lyrics on this are brutally lacking any kind of hope, which, considering the state of things, isn't entirely unreasonable. I just like that Carrie wrote a song like Can I Go On, which is pretty fucking sad, and didn't feel the need to sweeten it lyrically (I guess the tension comes from the upbeat nature of the music).

[bodysnatcher]

i don't know why but i'm about to check this out

godspeed