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Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports:
"Subtle" is hardly the first word that comes to mind when describing the sound of acclaimed punk trio Sleater-Kinney. But, in the case of their latest album, it fits.
Fans of the aggressive, female rock outfit will likely be struck by the material on its upcoming fourth album, The Hot Rock, but not for the usual reasons.
"Their differences this time are more subtle," said Slim Moon, owner of the Kill Rock Stars label, which will release The Hot Rock on Feb. 23. "It's not like they've suddenly become a new-wave band or a heavy-metal band."
While the group's second album, Call the Doctor (1996), spun heads with its bulls-eye ferocity, and last year's Dig Me Out added elements of traditional rock, the new album charts quieter ground.
The band that seemed to demand the world in an instant on "Call the Doctor" (RealAudio excerpt) is now focused on such themes as patience, resolution and grace. Intact, even enhanced, is the intricate weaving Sleater-Kinney founders Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein create with their vocals and guitars. Where earlier songs, such as "Words and Guitar," featured different lyrics running concurrently through the choruses, new tracks, such as "Burn, Don't Freeze!" and "Banned From the End of the World," expand that approach to the full song.
"I don't think there's any other bands that sound like them," Moon said. "And if you're that distinct, you don't have to make as big stylistic changes to have them be really significant changes."
A few of the album's 13 songs seem to pick up where earlier cuts left off.
"God Is a Number," one of several new songs the band played on a recent tour, revisits the mechanical life imagined on last year's "Heart Factory" (RealAudio excerpt). But while the older song half-jokingly envisioned a mechanical heart to protect actual feelings, Tucker worries in "God Is a Number" that today's computerized world is limited in grasping life's beauty: "Looking for some heart inside this great machine/ I don't get an answer except 011, 011, 011," she sings over a regimented beat from drummer Janet Weiss.
"The End of You," meanwhile, functions as an older sibling to one of Sleater-Kinney's best-known songs, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" the earlier track embraced indie-rock stardom, "The End of You" while uses an old sailing vessel as a metaphor to distance the group from music-industry hype. "I'm not the captain," Tucker proclaims. "I'm just another fan."
Not long after recording The Hot Rock, Tucker, 25, spoke about themes running through the album.
"There's a lot [about] love and struggling through different things," said Tucker, who, like Weiss, lives in Portland, Ore. (Brownstein lives in the band's original home base of Olympia, Wash.) "They're about working really hard in your life to find a sense of gracefulness. And I think this record is more graceful because of it."
A number of the new songs find the lead voice searching for a sense of resolution, even amid chaotic scenarios and frantic music.
"Let me come through ... the things we went through," Tucker sings on "One Song for You." The lyrics to "Burn, Don't Freeze!" are coated in fear but yearn for safety: "You come in between me and the darkness, please don't ever leave," Brownstein sings.
Adding to the atmosphere created in the music is the album's underlying theme of anticipation. No fewer than three songs mention a "wait" or "waiting" -- waiting out of necessity, not choice.
All this takes place in some unusual settings for a punk-rock record. In addition to the ancient ship on "The End of You," there's a hospital room on "The Size of Our Love" and a thief-in-the-night scenario on "Hot Rock" (which plays like an alternate vision of "Night Vandals," a recent song by Tucker's other band, Cadallaca).
While many of the songs deal with the challenge of finding a place of comfort and peace in the world, there are moments of release and exuberance on The Hot Rock.
"My soul is climbing tree trunks/ And swinging on every branch," Brownstein intones on "Get Up." Later she sings: "I hit the mark!/ I target moon, I target sky, I target sun/Fall down on the world before it falls on you."
But nowhere do Sleater-Kinney express their confidence as they do on "Banned From the End of the World," a taut new-wave number in which they profess freedom from millennial fear.
"Banned from the end of the world/ The future is here, look in the mirror," Brownstein sings, while Tucker's voice darts in and out of her lines: "We're the band from the end of the world."
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