All Our Little Wishes Have Run Dry

Sleater-Kinney @ Roseland Ballroom, 6/23/2005
The Fox / Wilderness / One More Hour / Rollercoaster / Light Rail Coyote / Modern Girl / Sympathy / Everything / What’s Mine Is Yours / Steep Air / Far Away / Jumpers / Let’s Call It Love / Entertain // Oh! / I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight / Step Aside / Words + Guitar /// Mother / Dig Me Out

After a ten minute instrumental section that largely abandoned their distinctive guitar style in favor of a string of amateur-level stoner rock jamming cliches, Sleater-Kinney segued into the lead single from their new album, which announces that they are not here to entertain. Well, jeez, no kidding!

This isn’t to say that I didn’t have a good time. In fact, the set up through “What’s Mine Is Yours” was stellar, and last night’s version of “Sympathy” could very well be best performance of an individual song that I’ve ever seen the band play (and this was my eleventh S-K show since 1997!) This was just a very, very frustrating show. I can’t say that I wasn’t deeply disappointed that the band chose not to include songs from more than half of their catalog, even though I know that they have in virtually every other city on their current tour. Okay, fine. I can deal with some incredibly poor song selections, too. Enough people seemed to really dig “Far Away” even though I think it’s easily one of the five worst songs that they’ve ever put on an LP. But more than anything, it just seemed that the band is very confused about their strengths, and are at times pushing in a direction that does not flatter them well in a live setting.

Sleater-Kinney “Wilderness”– So let’s get this straight. The gorgeous, highly composed instrumental passage in “Wilderness” that takes the song in an unexpected direction and implies some sort of epic journey in under 40 seconds is unquestionably one of the best things they’ve ever written. Brief noise jams, as in “What’s Mine Is Yours” are pretty awesome, and they should keep it up. (That bit when Corin comes back in after Carrie goes bonkers with the feedback is totally classic.) Drawn out guitar solos (especially those improvised live on stage) are simply not their strong suit, despite Carrie Brownstein’s “guitar hero” reputation, which she earned more for her creativity within her limitations than any kind of reverent embrace of established rock signifiers. I admire the effort, and I definitely believe that they were having a great time playing the end of “Let’s Call It Love,” but I know that I’m not the only one who was just waiting for them to move on to the next song.

I’ve put off posting “Wilderness” for over five months. At first it was out of consideration to the band and Sub Pop, who were understandably uncomfortable with the record leaking several months before its proper release, and once the record did make it to the stores, I didn’t want to get lost in the avalanche of press. I’m glad that I waited it out, because my inititial impression of the record has changed rather significantly, and had I posted the song back in February, it would’ve just been a lot of excitement and hyperbole. For the first month or two, The Woods seemed like a bold departure for the band, but as time goes on, I’m not sure what gave me that impression aside from the gut-kicking loudness of “The Fox” and some other studio tricks courtesy of David Fridmann. Once that novelty wears off, all that’s left are the songs themselves, which ranges from some of the best material of their career (the first four tracks and “Rollercoaster”) to listenable but unremarkable duds (the final three songs.) Back in May I had a minor epiphany while listening to the album – it was probably only a surprise to me that The Woods was good and interesting because One Beat was so terribly uneven and uninspiring.

I would imagine that the level of excitement one has for Sleater-Kinney’s current direction is somewhat dependent upon how invested they are in 70s-era rock signifiers, and how much you enjoy seeing a band that had previously avoided cliches submit to them with enthusiasm. It’s not as though the band is swallowed whole by their influences – their identity is too potent to be drowned out by much of anything, and there’s an undeniable S-Kness to every song on The Woods. But it’s very rich for a group that is slamming popular retro bands in their current single to make a record that borrows so heavily from Led Zeppelin and stoner metal. 1984 and 1972 bore Sleater-Kinney, but apparently 1969 is a source of endless excitement for them. Feh, glass houses and all that. It’s great to see them all fired up after all this time, but my hope that they will one day return to the relative nuance of The Hot Rock is beginning to seem like something that will never come to pass.

Richard & Linda Thompson “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” – Then again, by performing a pretty straightforward cover of this Richard & Linda Thompson song, it could be a sign that they will come back around. It was lovely to hear them play something with a tight arrangement and a clean guitar tone after all of that rawking and jamming. Subtlety is not their enemy. I just wish that they would understand that. I suspect that the band is more influenced by audience reaction than they ever let on, and that they push the bombast live because their (generally punky) fans usually sit around bored and glassy-eyed whenever they play anything remotely delicate. Just going on the response to last night’s covers, the chances of The Hot Rock II happening any time soon are almost nil – most of the room was entirely indifferent to “Bright Lights,” while the kinda obnoxious cover of Danzig’s “Mother” yielded spirited dancing and excited applause. (Click here to buy all but the first two Sleater-Kinney albums from Sub Pop, and here to buy the Richard & Linda Thompson record from Amazon.)