The team is so polite and kind about Sleater-Kinney’s No Cities to Love

They’re back! Sleater-Kinney (photo: Brigitte Sire).

When it was announced, seemingly out of thin air, that Olympia rock trio Sleater-Kinney were releasing their eighth album after a nearly decade-long hiatus, triumphant cries of joy rang out among the underground. Okay, that’s not been entirely proven and is just a pretty reasonable assumption, but we can tell you that prominent members of the Rice and Bread team were seen jumping up and clicking their heels (we actually did this when we heard the news).

Maybe it was the way the trio announced the release of No Cities to Love, in the same kind of confident yet humble way that guitarists/vocalists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss have always conducted their busy and really fucking awesome music careers (we won’t go into the marketing rollout for the album, but it was rad).

So read on, as we praise the new Sleater-Kinney album in a very polite and congratulatory tone! After all, this ain’t some wack shit like The Gaslight Anthem (sorry Greg, but that reference never gets old).

The Album Club:
Jason Schreurs, Rice and Bread Magazine co-founder
Megan Cole, Rice and Bread Magazine co-founder
Greg Pratt, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor
Blake Morneau, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor

The album: Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love (Sub-Pop Records)

Jason: So, this is Sleater-Kinney’s first album in 10 years. I don’t know if you guys are fans are not; I’m definitely a fan and I’ve been a fan since they started, and I think they’re awesome, so I’ll hold back for a minute and we’ll just talk about this new album, No Cities to Love. Who wants to start?

Blake: This album is pretty fucking badass. There’s not a lot to not like about this album. I really like this album. I’ve been a fan of Sleater-Kinney for a little while, and I’m not super well versed, but I’ve been a passing fan, and I love this record.

Greg: Yeah, I have never really been a fan. They’ve been one of those bands that I never took the time to listen to; we’ve all got a lot of those bands. This is actually the first time I’ve listened to a full Sleater-Kinney album, to the best of my knowledge. I just always assumed that I didn’t like them that much for some reason, but I’d never really heard them, so I was like, “Well, let’s see how this is…” and I was totally pumped on it. I thought it was great. The first song, “Price Tag,” was just amazing when it all kicked in, and I thought, “Holy shit, this is awesome!” And the album was pretty great all the way through; I was really impressed.

Megan: This seems like one of the few albums that’s come out in a while that’s actually an album. A lot of bands and musicians now just make compilations of singles or something; they’re not really focused on making an album that anyone wants to listen to all the way through. And this is one of the few albums that we’ve done in Album Club where I actually put it on and listened to it in its entirety, and didn’t get terribly annoyed with any particular song. It was just awesome listening, from the first to last song.

Jason: Like I said before, it’s been 10 years since their last album, The Woods, came out. And they did break up after that, or go an an indefinite hiatus for a long time. The Woods was a weird album because it was produced by Dave Fridmann, who’s worked with The Flaming Lips, and he has a really dirty, noisy production style. But they’re back with John Goodmanson on No Cities to Love, and he produced a lot of their classic albums, so it’s got a bit more of a poppy sound to it. And I don’t where I’m going with this… [Laughs]

Blake: I really like the production on this album. I like the fuzzy bass and the nice, clean guitars; it just sounds really good on my headphones when it’s cranked up, and that’s a big test for me.

Jason: Yeah. And I’m not sure if they’ve recorded any bass parts on this album, but traditionally there’s no bass in Sleater-Kinney, so it’s a baritone guitar and a regular guitar. They’ve never had a bass player throughout their years.

Greg: Really? Wow! I had no idea. And this album is actually pretty bass heavy. So on this album there’s no bassist? Wow.

Blake: The low end is really nice on this album.

Jason: It’s weird after watching Portlandia and then hearing Sleater-Kinney again, because I found myself thinking about some of [guitarist/vocalist] Carrie Brownstein’s characters on that show, instead of her being the rocker. It sort of changed it a bit for me, just being a fan of her music through the years, and then instead of picturing her in your head as this awesome rock and roller, you’re thinking of her as this variety show star.

Megan: It’s weird, too, because she doesn’t have a lot of musical roles on that show.

Blake: I imagine that would be a conscious thing, too. The way she is on the show could change how you feel about her in the band, so she probably didn’t want to intertwine those too much.

Jason: So what else do you like about this album?

Greg: I love the… how can I word this? Just the way they play together; when they all kick in and they’re locked in together. You can just tell they play together wonderfully, and they just sound like a band with such great chemistry. It sounds kind of cliche, but I can tell songs really click.

Blake: I really like the song, “Bury Our Friends.” It has a nice groove to it, and it’s still in the same vein as everything else, but it’s a little dancier. I dig it.

Jason: I’ve got a note here that says, “‘Bury Our Friends’ has got a swing to it.” Compared to their other albums, I think this one is up there. I was actually quite cautious about this album, because I love their stuff so much, and I thought, “What happens if it sucks?” That would just be a downer after 10 years of being apart, but No Cities to Love actually measures up really well to all of their other albums. I’ve only heard it a handful of times so far, but I think it will be right up there with the rest of them, so that’s cool.

Blake: The only thing that kind of jarred me is, as a guy who doesn’t listen to a lot of punk-influenced music, sometimes the vocal inflections get to me a little bit, but that’s more a symptom of the genre, rather than their singing, because I like their voices.

Jason: What, you mean Carrie’s fake British accent? [Laughs]

Blake: Yeah, the more piercing vocal notes get to me sometimes, but that’s a minor complaint. And that’s my only minor complaint, really. It does give it a certain swagger that it needs, but I’m just not used to it.

Megan: Also, it’s refreshing to have Sleater-Kinney back and in new peoples’ minds. It’s really exciting to have a band of kick-ass women making awesome music that they’ve written themselves. In this day and age, it’s hard to find a lot of positive female musical role models, and these ladies are coming back in at the right time. Instead of the Katy Perrys of the world, we have real musicians back at it again.

Blake: Thank you for saying that, because I didn’t want to be the one to bring up gender, but that’s a good point. It’s extra cool that they’re a group of badass women, but this would kick ass even if they were dudes. [Laughs] Either way, this album just kicks serious ass.

Jason: As long as David Letterman doesn’t call them “girls” on their next appearance. He called them “girls” one time when they played his show, and you could just see their faces drop. As far this album goes, they’re not just coming back and rehashing their old material; there’s some really weird, different stuff on this album and they’ve come back to push it again, even totally different than The Woods, and totally different than One Beat, the album before that. So it’s cool that they’re not just coming back and taking the easy route. And you can tell they took a lot of time writing this album.

Blake: This is a finely crafted record.

Sleater-Kinney (photo: Brigitte Sire)

Greg: So here’s a question from someone who is having my first real experience with this band: where should I go from here? And am I going to be disappointed with the rest of the albums? Or are the other ones just as awesome?

Jason: They are. But you have to be careful, because if you go back to the first two or three albums they are going to sound rudimentary compared to this one, and that’s how it is with a lot of bands. But you’ll probably want to go back and listen to One Beat, which came out in 2002, or All Hands on the Bad One, which came out in 2000. And another great album is called The Hot Rock, which came out in 1999. But don’t go back to their previous one, The Woods, which came out in 2005, because that was their real departure album, and with the Dave Fridmann production it’s quite a jarring record. You probably want to come around to that one later. It’s really, really good, but save it for later. So, to answer your question, start with One Beat.

Greg: I was very happy to have this opportunity to get introduced to this band, because you know how it can be with bands that are always on your radar, but you never get around to them. So I probably would have never checked out Sleater-Kinney, and for no good reason, really, so I’m glad that I was made to check them out because I’m totally into this album.

Jason: That’s great! I’ve been babbling on about them for years, so it’s nice to see other people getting into them. I think they’re one of the best bands that’s ever come out of the punk scene, just because they’ve challenged things a lot, and they’re not necessarily an accessible band, which is one of the cool things about them. People could totally hate them, which I like.

Blake: Yeah, it’s pretty densely packed stuff. Pearl Jam actually introduced me to Sleater-Kinney, because they’ve been buddies for a long time, and that’s how I heard about them in the late ’90s.

Megan: Is it reasonable to be optimistic that maybe there’s a re-emergence of awesome female rock bands? With Kathleen Hanna doing The Julie Ruin thing again, and then these guys coming back, it’s natural to make the Olympia, Washington riot grrl connection. Could there be a revival on our hands? It would be nice to see. The music world gets dominated by men, and I hope that this is the beginning of really awesome upswing for female rock bands.

Blake: That would be nice. I’m not sure how to answer that… That’d be cool! [Laughs]

Jason: Any other thoughts or observations?

Greg: It’s just a great album. It totally won me over.

Jason: I almost feel like we want to just end this conversation so we can go and listen to the album again. Can we just end this so we can go and listen to it again? [Laughs]

Blake: I have it on right now. It’s playing in the background. [Laughs]

Sleater-Kinney‘s No Cities to Love is out now on Sub-Pop Records.