Riot Goin’ On



Rock’s saviors: Tucker, Brownstein and Weiss.

Downplaying their politics, Sleater-Kinney make statements with their guitars.

by Sara Marcus

Back in 1997, jaded music writers resigned themselves to the death of rock and pinned their hopes on electronica as the savior of popular music. Then a Pacific Northwest punk trio called Sleater-Kinney released Dig Me Out, restored a lot of people’s faith in rock ’n’ roll, and found themselves in the spotlight.

The male rock writers’ surprise was palpable: Rock had just been saved by a band of girls. Not only that, but the girls were associated with riot grrrl, a movement that had become, in many circles, a derogatory term for angry young women who couldn’t play their instruments too well.

But those who’d belonged to the network of riot grrrl meetings, zines and conventions smiled triumphantly from behind their copies of Bust and Punk Planet. Of course rock would be saved by females. The male aggression and propulsive sexuality that had fed the flames of rock ’n’ roll for 40 years might be a constant fact of life, but rock was running out of ways to make these things aesthetically compelling. The genre’s much-needed shot in the arm had to be a syringe full of estrogen, and Sleater-Kinney administered it with passion and precision.

The band’s newest album, All Hands On the Bad One (Kill Rock Stars), builds on the powerful, guitar-driven rock that marked Dig Me Out. To the twining descants and vocal counterpoint that shone on 1999’s The Hot Rock, singer/guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein add straight-up harmonies, sometimes layering their voices into a veritable chorus of backup singers. Working with the traditional rock vocabulary of feedback, riffs, rich power chords, and energetic beats and fills (courtesy of formidable drummer Janet Weiss, who also plays in Quasi), Sleater-Kinney continue to affirm a belief in rock, but with a renewed consciousness of what it means to do so as women.

On 1996’s Call the Doctor, Brownstein announced, "I wanna be your Joey Ramone/ Invite you back after the show." The band assumed that if they set their sights on classic rock-stardom and made their intentions clear, it would come true: "If you want it that much," Tucker sang the next year, "it’s enough." And if the overtly feminist messages that marked Sleater-Kinney’s first two records had to be jettisoned along the way, so be it. Besides, for a band of girls to become the Next Big Rock Thing would be a feminist message in and of itself.

Dig Me Out’s insistent focus on rock came out sounding like a protest song anyway. In "Words and Guitar," Brownstein hurriedly blurted, "Music is the air I breathe/ Can’t take this away from me," leading us to believe that someone was still trying. But they didn’t talk about who was trying, or how.

Not that Sleater-Kinney lacked the language to name their nemesis. Tucker came of age in riot grrrl meetings, where people never hesitated to call out male privilege or condescension toward females when they saw it. But for much of Sleater-Kinney’s tenure in the public eye, Tucker preferred to distance herself from that movement.

"There was no point of talking about it [riot grrrl] with a reporter," she recalls. "They only wanted to make fun of it. From my experience, it was a heinous topic to go into."

Sleater-Kinney’s lyrics dropped most references to politics. After the rock-centered words of Dig Me Out, The Hot Rock focused on personal relationships. When reporters wrote that the band had "grown up," they were referring to more than the increased complexity and skill of the music. The story, told again and again with varying levels of subtlety, was that Sleater-Kinney proved they’d graduated to the big time by abandoning politics.

But things can’t end there. Not when your single largest bloc of fans is teenaged feminists who think you’ve sort of sold out, and you relate to them because you used to be them. ("Everywhere you go, they say ‘Hello/ weren’t you the one that sold your soul?’" Brownstein sings on Bad One’s "#1 Must-Have.") Not once you realize that despite all the critical plaudits and Year’s Best picks, men in rock bands still don’t treat you as peers. ("The best man/ won’t hang out with the girl band," goes the rollicking, singsong "You’re No Rock ’n’ Roll Fun.") And not when you’re a couple of strong-willed women being asked to repudiate one of the strongest forces in your adolescence in exchange for musical respect.

The turning point came last fall, when Seattle’s Experience Music Project announced a riot grrrl retrospective to be held in January. As veterans of the movement exchanged e-mails and anticipated the event, Tucker grew nostalgic for the passion and political certainty of her past.

"That kind of self-righteousness really comes when you’re 20 years old, and it fades when you get older," Tucker, now 27, says philosophically. "Hopefully a little of that is a self-awareness that you’re not always right.… But that kind of righteousness is really important." She cites misogynist mainstream rock lyrics and the rapes at last summer’s Woodstock festival as proof that the cultural work riot grrrl attempted is far from done.

The song that came out of her struggle, "#1 Must-Have," is Bad One’s strongest cut, emotionally and musically. In a voice seething with irony, resentment and pain, Tucker sings about the Woodstock rapes, her own journey from feminist radical to pop culture cover girl, and the commodification of feminism: "Now I’m spending all my days at girlpower-dot-com/ Trying to buy back a little piece of me." The song culminates in the anguished nostalgia of the final chorus, over tearing guitars: "For all the ladies out there I wish/ We could write more than the next marketing bid."

But can they? For Sleater-Kinney, the only choice is to keep playing. "Culture is what we make it, yes it is," Tucker finally proclaims at the end of "#1 Must-Have." She may be wrong, but Sleater-Kinney have to believe in it if they’re to go on. And for rock’s sake, let’s hope they do.

Sleater-Kinney will perform with The Butchies and The Gossip on Sat., May 20, at The Trocadero, 10th and Arch Sts., 215-922-LIVE.