sleater-kinney 2024

Wrote a long email to a friend who had forwarded me a video of Corin and Carrie, and thought maybe it was time to put my thoughts here on the blog.

I've been thinking a lot about S-K lately. The new album is the reason, plus it seems like everyone I know wants to tell me that the band has a new album ... I guess my Sleater-Kinney obsession is well-known.

When No Cities to Love came out after the ten-year hiatus, I was happy. It wasn't their greatest album, but it was good, better than I had expected, and I looked forward to the future. And they were still great live ... saw them 3 times, climaxing with a New Years Eve show at the end of 2016. But then came The Center Won't Hold, which I liked but didn't love, and then Janet left the band. I saw them twice after that, my 16th and 17th time, and honestly, I liked the three times I saw Wild Flag more than I liked those shows. When Path of Wellness came out, it barely registered with me, and now Little Rope sounds OK but I'm not obsessed anymore.

And I think it's all about Janet. I thought of Sleater-Kinney as a trio ... maybe because the first time I saw them was in 1998, after Janet joined the band, or maybe because I was so in love with her drumming. I thought of her as the final piece in creating a great band. Now, I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly what happened, and I imagine the three of them are on good terms, but I haven't been able to shake what Janet said when she left. “I said, ‘Am I just the drummer now?’ They said yes. And I said, ‘Can you tell me if I am still a creative equal in the band?’ And they said no. So, I left.”

That crushed me, way more than the hiatus ever did. It was like when the Beatles broke up. Because I got the feeling, and nothing the last five years have shown me otherwise, that Carrie and Corin always thought it was their band, while I always thought it was a trio.

So I might like them better now if I hadn't loved them before. But I can't get Janet out of my mind. I wish I liked Quasi, but I don't.