Pretty in Punk
Fuck the Strokes. Forget the White Stripes. The best rock ’n roll band in America is Sleater-Kinney.
No less of a reputable, middle-of-the-road authority than Time magazine decreed thusly last year, though legions of fans didn’t exactly need to be told. But the band—singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss—haven’t been seduced by praise.
“It was like, great, something for my grandmother to clip out and show to her friends,” Brownstein told FM. “I mean, we feel privileged and lucky. But declaring something the best is such an arbitrary, subjective thing. You can’t really internalize those kinds of accolades.”
Smart, bold and political, Sleater-Kinney emerged from the Pacific Northwest with roots in riot grrrl, a movement of mostly youthful feminist and queer women who defied the sexist art and music establishments to revitalize punk rock. Despite widespread acclaim and a passionate fan base, the band has remained stubbornly independent and has little of the mainstream name recognition of those who have been crowned rock’s new hope.
“The media declared rock and guitars dead a couple of years ago, and they’ve resurrected it again, even though it’s always existed,” Brownstein said of the so-called rock revival. “And now that it’s back, it’s just another white boy with a guitar…. We don’t have a vocabulary yet in our society to include other people within this mold of what rock ’n roll is.”
Veteran music critic Robert Christgau said once of Sleater-Kinney that, “The reason that they are as important as they are is that they’re not a lesbian band in any kind of limiting or definitive way.” Referring to the fact that despite riot grrrl’s genesis as a way for girls to play guitar whether they were “good” at it or not, Sleater-Kinney’s musical virtuosity transcends politics. But the band contains multitudes, and predictably enough, refuses to choose among characterizations. “We are feminist, queer, pop, punk, rock,” said Brownstein matter-of-factly. “We’re all those things at once.”
One Beat, the band’s sixth and most recent release, testifies this more intensely than any sound bite. After a year’s hiatus, they returned with an album where raw talent and energy have given way to ripe complexity and still more energy. The songs, rich with new production agility, are still sharpened with critiques of the post-Sept. 11 world. “There are reasons to unite / Is this why we unite?” the band demands on “Combat Rock,” a reggae-tinged homage to the Clash. “If you hate this time / Remember, we are the time.”
“There was a certain amount of futility people felt after what happened on Sept. 11,” said Brownstein. For the band, songwriting was “the antithesis of that kind of spiritual and psychological deadening of the tragic.”
Live at the Roxy last Monday, the force of counteraction wasn’t just palpable; it was crackling. The trio have a way of watching each other onstage, an easy, grinning conspiracy of companionship that has survived through six albums, multiple side projects and a short-lived romantic relationship between Tucker and Brownstein. No one fronts this triangular onstage configuration and Sleater-Kinney likes it that way.
“We like things to be shared. Everything is democratic,” said Brownstein, who splits lead vocals with Tucker and backup with Weiss. The taut interplay between the three is the band’s greatest strength: Tucker’s massive quiver is braced by Brownstein’s sonorous shouts, while Weiss is a unrelenting rhythmic bulwark.
If our mothers were electrified by the strut and swagger of rock ’n roll, if their eyes followed every strum and they threw their bodies into the beat, odds are they were staring up at a man. So what happens to a generation of girls that experiences that same idolatry, that loses itself to the crowd and the guitar—without the brash misogyny of a Robert Plant or a Mick Jagger?
Sleater-Kinney’s members are sexy for the same reason that those men were: they’re powerful. But despite their unapologetic musical muscle, their dominance over the stage has not a hint of brutality. It’s built from joy, righteous anger and a refusal to be meek.
It’s also built from consideration. At the Roxy, when Brownstein complained about the gusts of cold air blowing from the vents, the audience, muggy with dancing fervor, registered its protest with yelps. “Okay, if you guys are too hot, we’ll keep it on,” said Brownstein obligingly. “We’ll just have to whip ourselves into a frenzy.”
This did not present a problem. That night, the crowd— fresh-faced and soft-butch, sporting horn-rimmed glasses and carefully bedraggled coiffures—was frequently reduced to whispers amid thundering drum solos, only to be thrust back into blissful tumult by exploding guitars and vocals.
The vocals, usually demure or arresting, harsh or sweetly harmonized, were frustratingly muffled by technical maladjustments. The women were unfazed: Tucker, coy and roaring in pink polka dots and fishnets; Weiss, vigilant with the beat; Brownstein, lean and robust, expertly brandishing her guitar.
After the show, a brawny security guard on the red line was feeling chatty. We compared purloined paraphernalia: our set list, his fragment of Tucker’s security bracelet. Asked what he had thought of the show, the guard considered it for a moment. “Not bad,” he said. “For an all-girl band.”