Sleater kinney - The Woods

by Mark Rowland

published: 19 / 5 / 2005

Label: Sub Pop
Format: CD

intro

Eclectic indie rock on seventh album from the "consistently brilliant and diverse" Sleater-Kinney

Since their third album ‘Dig Me Out’, Sleater-Kinney have been effortlessly churning out American indie-rock classics. In their eleven years together, they have gone from angry riot grrls to sophisticated indie icons. Their approach to their music of "let’s try anything our way" has become similar to the way Pavement worked. In fact, Sleater-Kinney are similar to Pavement in several ways. Apart from some similarities in sound, both bands have produced fantastically coherent, diverse albums that feel like they were written in a day without much thought. Sleater-Kinney's seventh album ‘The Woods’ is no exception to this. From feedback drenched opener ‘The Fox’ to the groovy ‘Night Light’, this album rocks, but skits across a variety of styles. A lot of the songs on ‘The Woods’ seem to take a genre of guitar pop and cross it brilliantly with a completely different one. ‘Wilderness’ starts off as upbeat guitar pop which transforms into blues rock halfway through, while ‘What’s Mine is Yours’ sounds like ‘Blur’-era Blur with a mid-section that sounds like an unreleased Hendrix song. This is not true of all tracks on the album, however. ‘Jumpers’ is a jittery, driving tune propelled by Janet Weiss’ jazzy drumming, ‘Modern Girl’ is sunny, subtle pop backed with slowly building distortion and cynical lyrics about, well, being a modern girl. Current single ‘Entertain’ is an excellent fuzzy post-punk number with a great chorus, with guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s vocals merging seamlessly. Most surprising is the angular, stomping, 11-minute epic ‘Let’s Call it Love’, which is similar in feel if not in sound to Television’s opus ‘Marquee Moon’. Sleater-Kinney show on ‘The Woods’ that they can write songs in any way they want and still sound like Sleater-Kinney. Considering their formidable back catalogue, this is not much of a surprise, but to be as consistently brilliant and diverse as Sleater-Kinney are is something to be very proud of.

Track Listing:-

1 The Fox
2 Wilderness
3 What's Mine Is Yours
4 Jumpers
5 Modern Girl
6 Entertain
7 Rollercoaster
8 Steep Air
9 Let's Call It Love
10 Night Light

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