Sleater-Kinney
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The Waitresses, who after all knew what half the world’s population liked, claimed they could rule the world if they could only get the parts, and what Sleater-Kinney (whose Corin Tucker, in a more blase moment, has been compared to the Waitresses’ Patty Donahue) have more than anything is the parts. There’s parts all over Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out, the two utter masterpieces the trio has unleashed in about a year’s time: Tucker will sing a lead part while second guitarist and singer Carrie Brownstein moans a backup part or vice versa; rockin’ parts screech into pretty parts; anthemic parts run up against heartbreaking parts; calm parts against angry parts; angry parts against angry parts. Together the parts add up to a joyously pragmatic songcraft that’s about to catapult them right out of indieland.
Some comparisons, then, to classic rock are in order. Like Joni Mitchell’s For the Roses, Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out display a romantic, consuming devotion to constructing a song so carefully that anyone willing to put time into sorting through its ineffables will be richly rewarded. Where Mitchell immersed herself in a sort of pristine chamber music, however, Sleater-Kinney rock like the Rolling Stones circa Exile on Main Street–that is, they layer vocals and guitars into a rich, dense, eternal sound, a sound that seems particularly tailored for those of us who come back to music again and again to enhance the quality of our lives.
