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Album Review: Sleater-Kinney, "The Woods" (Sub Pop)
After the release of 2002's great "One Beat," it suddenly became fashionable to refer to Sleater-Kinney as "the world's greatest rock band." It only takes about five seconds of listening to the Olympia, WA-raised trio's latest offering to realize that such lofty praise didn't go to the musicians' heads.
"The Woods" hardly sounds like the commercial-breakthrough attempt that some expected. Instead, the CD is every bit as rough and tumble and, thankfully, defiantly uncommercial as the band's mid-'90s releases on the Chainsaw label.
Far from cleaning up its act, Sleater-Kinney pushes further than ever into sludgy, Sonic Youth-type material on "The Woods." That's something the band has been toying with live on recent tours, extending their regular three-minute punk smashes into fiery Television-like jams that erupt from the volcanic dueling guitar work of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker. The band fully showcases that side on the new album's powerful 11-minute opus, "Let's Call It Love."
"The Woods" is a guitar record, basically from start to finish. Brownstein shows by far the most versatility of her career as she uses tinges of moody psychedelia, gutty classic rock, Cobain-style grunge and hardcore punk to color such songs as "Wilderness," "Jumpers" and "Entertain." The sound that the listener won't be able to get out of his or her head, however, is Tucker's fierce caterwaul on numbers like "The Fox." The vocalist remains tied with Kristin Hersh for the title of best screamer in rock.
