Sleater-Kinney
No Cities to Love

It's not yet time to become reactionaries, Sleater-Kinney.

For example, a few days ago, we were watching TV. A commercial for some frozen cutlets to be microwaved came on, I don't know, I don't remember the product well. At a certain point, out of nowhere, the guy in the commercial tells his mother that his friend is actually his partner, meaning they care for each other. She obviously takes it really well, and we're happy for them, for their crappy diet and for this sudden progressive opening, and it's all a toast, a viva l’Italia, and someone improvises a l’Italia è il paese che amo, qui ho le mie radici, i miei orizzonti eccetera. We also rejoice at the fact that the promoted product carries the brand of the famous fish stick producer, and anyone who doesn't understand the irony is a Kanye West. Anyway, I don't mean to be sarcastic, we're genuinely pleased.

Except that in the next commercial break, another of those commercials comes on where the wife is cleaning the kitchen, and the husband comes home in aflagship car and with a briefcase, compliments her on the shine of everything, and gives her a prize peck and a little biscuit. Then another one where she can't find the right product to scrubthe husband's mess from the toilet rim. Then another one where Claudia Schiffer has to press a button specifically designed for blondes who don't know how to handle the clutch and smashtheir husbands' SUVs in a desperate attempt to climb gentle slopes. In short, we're discouraged again and seek redemption.

So I put on the new Sleater-Kinney. You know, in the nineties and up to 2006, Sleater-Kinney were the embodiment of the alternative American music. Three fierce lesbian feminist amazons. At first, they almost did foxcore, then they became melodically bourgeois, while remaining garage and combative in spirit and at certain points.

The guitars of Sleater-Kinney, in that particular and uniqueDanelectro blend, have helped us learn that struggle is not giving up expressing oneself, nor uncritical adherence to keywords and archetypes of a movement. And I think those who say that Sleater-Kinney were the pinnacle of riot grrrls are wrong. Sleater-Kinney were something decidedly different and more; something that looked to the avant-garde feminism of sono-femmina-faccio-quel-che-faccio by Kim Gordon. And I also think those who claim to be in solidarity with the cause, dress as enlightened progressives, and then stumble over “la Brownstein,” “la Tucker,” and “la Weiss” are wrong.

The sum and compendium of everything was The Woods, in 2005, which gave their best ironic-melodic – just listen to Modern Girl – but it was an overall heavy and crooked album like perhaps never before. Thenten years of hiatus and side projects; then suddenly a reunion, self-celebratory box set, and album of unreleased tracks: this No Cities to Love.

But this No Cities to Love is just a half-hour of craft and experience. The adolescent idealistic rages now sublimated into sterile fashion criticisms sound far not only from the hormonal ferocity of a Little Mouth but also from the more meditated suffering of a Dig Me Out. So far that it instinctively makes me shout at reactionary regression. Tucker's baritone settles way too often on a standard bassline, I wouldn't say lazy, but certainly undersized compared to the past. The sound loses a lot as a result; if it weren't for a Brownstein in a state of grace, it would tend towards the anonymity stigmatized in the distant times of their Anonymous. But aside from the beautiful guitars and some nice rhythmic solutions, I find an barren and winking void of inspiration.

The unbridled hype and the stale groovy and smelly Bury Our Friends, the first single. Then the dead nature on the cover. Then the farce of the early release due to theft and sharing of the masters. Everything pointed to the worst, indeed.

Brownstein has definitively converted to the sg and takes the lead, and thank goodness, because if A New Wave is by far the best track – the only one truly up to their standards – certain Tucker-branded episodes are almost embarrassing. The fortysomething rage of Fangless, for example, is the lowest point of their career, despite the one-two beginning might impress positively. The harmonized chorus that works in A New Wave sounds so forced and fake in the title track that at the end you can hear the Queens Of The Stone Age. Other tracks, like the final mess of Fade, sound anachronistic and nostalgic and nothing more. Good to make you want to put on Warpaint.

We can save four or, to be generous, five songs for their skewed extravagance and the skill with which they are played, which still remains, and blessed are those who will see them live. But to fill the gaps in inspiration, not even a crumb of hardcore-meanness or a bit of that rock'n roll plain and simple that used to make even minor tracks like Ironclad flow so well. All sacrificed in the name of an polite and friendly indie rock, forty-something, and married-with-kids like Tucker.

In short, a pretty bad and unnecessary album. If you're people embittered by sexism stuck at pink quotas while everything around evolves and progresses, go seek comfort in the old Sleater-Kinney records. If you want to listen to one of the best indie groups born in the nineties, do the same.

If instead you like listening to Virgin while eating pastabarilla, here you go.