Only Together Do We Break The Rules

Sleater-Kinney @ Kings Theater 12/12/2015
Price Tag / Far Away / Fangless / Jumpers / Light Rail Coyote / What’s Mine Is Yours / No Cities to Love / All Hands on the Bad One / Words + Guitar / Wilderness / Surface Envy / A New Wave / Was It A Lie? / Bury Our Friends / One Beat / I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone / Turn It On / Entertain // Merry Xmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight) / Oh! / Dig Me Out / Modern Girl

Sleater-Kinney @ Irving Plaza 12/14/2015
Price Tag / Fangless / Jumpers / Get Up / Surface Envy / What’s Mine Is Yours / Ironclad / Start Together / Was It A Lie? / A New Wave / Bury Our Friends / All Hands on the Bad One / No Cities to Love / One Beat / The Fox / Words + Guitar / Turn It On / Entertain // Modern Girl / Rock Lobster (with Fred Armisen) / Dig Me Out

Sleater-Kinney “Surface Envy”

Before these two shows, I hadn’t seen Sleater-Kinney since August of 2006, when they played their final gig in New York, about three shows before they disbanded for nearly a decade. During their original run, I saw them many times over – maybe 15 times between 1997 and 2006? Something like that. S-K were a very big deal to me, and their shows were always very emotional for me, particularly during the Hot Rock era. I am happy to report that the Sleater-Kinney of 2015 is just as vital and powerful as the version I saw many years ago, and if anything, they’ve become a stronger live band as their technical skills have evolved and their occasional reluctance about being rock stars has almost completely disappeared. This is most notable when Carrie Brownstein performs “Entertain” at the end of the set, and her theatricality and showmanship is slightly at odds with a song in which she’s telling you “we’re not here cos we want to entertain.”

Corin Tucker’s voice is still astonishing, both in how well she controls its intensity and volume, and in how it can convey particular emotions and depths of feeling that I don’t think anyone else is capable of approaching. The sound of it triggers something that I can’t explain, but hearing her sing is very cathartic. Everyone leaves an S-K show with this sort of “what just happened to me, I need to recuperate” feeling.

These two shows were in very different venues. Kings Theater is a large and fancy theater; a converted movie palace that’s roughly equivalent to Radio City Music Hall. Irving Plaza is a small club, and was THE place for well-known indie acts to play from the mid ‘90s on through the very early ‘00s. (It never went away, but Bowery Presents have basically pushed every cool act towards Bowery Ballroom, Music Hall of Williamsburg, and Webster Hall in the past decade or so, and Irving Plaza is only back in rotation lately as a result of what I’m told is a beef between Bowery Presents and Webster Hall.) Sleater-Kinney is much better in a room like Irving Plaza, where the audience can be in close proximity to the band, and the audience can be a bit more physical in their reaction to the music. The enthusiasm of an audience in a seated venue tends to get dispersed, but all the most enthusiastic people gravitate to each other on a floor, and it changes the temperature of everything. The intensity in the room last night was what I remember best from seeing them in the old days. Seeing how other people connect in an immediate and visceral way to songs like “Get Up,” “Start Together,” “The Fox,” “Words + Guitar,” “Turn It On,” and “Dig Me Out” amplifies that feeling in a way that’s almost entirely overwhelming.

A word about Fred Armisen’s appearance in the encore at Irving Plaza: Their version of The B-52’s “Rock Lobster” was INCREDIBLY faithful, right on down to wheeling out a vintage Farfisa for the exact right organ sound. Armisen is famous for being a gifted impressionist, but his Fred Schneider is so complete and accurate that it was easy to just pretend you were there watching the B-52’s of the late ‘70s. (I saw the real B-52’s play this song a few years ago, and it wasn’t quite as good, but hey, they’re all in their 60s now and it’s fine.) It was very fun, and one of the most committed covers I’ve ever seen, particularly as The B-52’s have one of the most specific sounds in the history of rock music. But hey, that’s true of Sleater-Kinney too.

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