Hush Hush And Rock

Sleater-Kinney @ Webster Hall 8/2/2006
Start Together / The Fox / The Drama You’ve Been Craving / Wilderness / Jumpers / Light Rail Coyote / Night Light / Ironclad / Rollercoaster / Hot Rock / What’s Mine Is Yours / Youth Decay / Modern Girl / Let’s Call It Love / Entertain / Sympathy / Dig Me Out // Ballad of a Ladyman / Oh! / Call The Doctor / Get Up / Words + Guitar /// Turn It On / One More Hour

Okay, no fucking around. Just look over that setlist a few times. Count your lucky stars that this show was filmed for a forthcoming dvd, because this was probably one of the best Sleater-Kinney shows ever. And really, maybe one of the best rock shows of all time. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was one of the four or five best concerts that I’ve ever attended.

That said, let’s move on.

Before getting into Webster Hall, I was chatting with a girl on line outside who was seeing them for the very first time. She had wanted to go to the Roseland show last June, but it happened to fall on the day of her high school graduation. Though I’m sure she would have loved it, I think she sorta lucked out because that show was really not that hot, and this was pretty much the best possible S-K set that you could hope for if you’re only ever going to see them once, assuming that you’re fine with only one song from Call The Doctor.

This girl was exactly the right person for me to speak with before this show. She had the sort of intense enthusiasm that comes from wide-eyed teenage fandom, which is exactly where I started out with this band back when I was a senior in high school. I’m not a big fan of “full circle” as a narrative device (seriously, Joss Whedon, you’ve got to stop with it), but it was ideal for this occasion. Thinking back on my review of that Roseland show, I was just so bitchy and annoyed, and though a lot of my criticisms at that point were valid and sincere, I think it was mostly me grappling with the band drifting away from what I wanted them to be/become. Now that I accept The Woods as the end point of their career (at least for now; they’ve never said anything about breaking up) I enjoy it so much more as a whole LP. Even “Let’s Call It Love,” which was tedious when I saw them last summer, was mindblowing tonight. Maybe the Roseland show was uninspired; maybe I was being a dick. It doesn’t really matter now.

Sleater-Kinney “Hot Rock” – When I saw that they played this song in Philadelphia over the weekend, I was overcome with this odd mixture of joy that I might see them play one of my all-time favorites again for the first time in years, and dread, because the song is tied to extremely painful memories, and I wasn’t sure how I’d react to it. I mean, as much as I totally adore this song, I normally avoid it because the “it’s not real / you don’t need to tell me that it’s not real” part on the bridge hits me like a truck (a truck of…emotion? with wheels made of…memories?) just about every time that I hear it. One of the most visceral moments of any show that I’ve ever seen came when they did this part at the only other time I’ve seen it before tonight, back in 1999. But somehow, tonight, it was like a bloodletting. It was empowering and therapeutic. Not to get back to the full circle thing, but it felt like closure. There’s another song on The Hot Rock (which is my favorite S-K album; it would be an understatement to say that I was overjoyed when they did “Get Up” towards the end of this show) that starts with the line “don’t talk like you’re 19, you’re 35 if you’re a day,” and though I’m actually going to be 27 on Saturday, it’s still a good thing to fully let go of all that bad late-teenage emotion.

I’m not old at all, but I think this show does mark a clean ending to my weird, weird youth. I started on this band when I was about to turn 17! They aren’t just tied to angst, their songs are connected to so much of my life, good and bad, from the past decade that I can barely get into it; it’s just too personal. (To steal a line from Whit Stillman: I never confide anything in you, and so I guess you’re forced to extrapolate.) I’m sure a lot of you can say a lot of the same things about them, and might even end up missing them more than I will. But I’m grateful, and I don’t plan on ever not listening to their music, and I had so much fun tonight that I’m still awed two and a half hours after the show ended. Thank you, Sleater-Kinney. Have a nice time being moms, students, solo artists, studio musicians, senators, astronauts, scientists, or whatever it is you all plan on doing for the forseeable future.

(Click here to buy The Hot Rock and a whole bunch of other Sleater-Kinney albums and merchandise from Buy Olympia.)

Elsewhere: Brooklyn Vegan has some great photos from the show. He must have put them up like ten minutes after it ended or something! That guy is incredible.