Sleater-Kinney
The Woods

THE REVIEW

This was among the last beacons of the now-defunct Riot Grrrls movement of the early '90s, this all-female trio from Portland, who released the album in question a year before a farewell veiled with the words "indefinite hiatus", certainly softer than a stronger definition that can be as violent as a stab wound: breakup.

But perhaps this was inevitable. "The Woods," in fact, represents the pinnacle of a climb that the three girls (Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein on vocals and guitars, and Janet Weiss on drums) progressively undertook successfully, resulting in 6 highly respectable albums, starting from the influence of the Riot Grrrls, particularly Bikini Kill, to then propose a more personal journey: an excellent mix of pop, punk, and rock based on the communication and alternation of two guitars, united by the tight rhythm of the drums. A mix that seemed to have consolidated definitively with the previous "One Beat" released in 2002. However, Sleater-Kinney decided to surprise us (noteworthy the choice of Dave Fridmann as producer and publishing the album with Sub-Pop instead of Kill Rock Stars like almost all their previous records).

The surprise effect arrives right from the first track, "The Fox": a firecracker exploding in the listener's ears, startling those who least expect it with its violent and powerful alternation between fast and slow, featuring lyrics like a modern fairy tale. The second track, "Wilderness", introduces us to one of the album's central themes, the desolation and disillusionment of everyday life, which will be revisited in the following "Jumpers" and "Modern Girl". The third track, "What's mine is Yours" hints at the new musical ingredients added to the band's recipe: psychedelia, noise, and improvisation. Retrospective elements, often found in lyrics containing literal references (Twain in "Jumpers" and Huxley in "Modern Girl"), that the girls look to in order to move forward, improve, and try to play something good, rich in references to the past but, for that reason, not less original. The manifesto of this "philosophy" is what is probably the best track on the album: "Entertain". A denunciation sung with bored and tight voices against the current indie scene, in their opinion, a passive copy of past bands without taking inspiration from their initial premises.

In this cloudy and disillusioned album, there is room for a brief but intense and warm ray of light, represented by the lovely "Rollercoaster", a sonic roller coaster on which one can only let go. The clouds return with the melancholic "Steep Air", followed by the near 11-minute "battle" of "Let's call it love", perhaps the definitive synthesis of what the three girls have learned in 11 years of career.
The album closes with a bitter pill that must be swallowed, willing or not, the sad "Night Light" that leaves us with a "Lost in Translation"-style sound image of a stepmotherly metropolis ready to swallow us in our loneliness.

"The Woods" could easily be the soundtrack of the materialistic, cliché, and solitary urban life from which, as "Jumpers" implies, the single that closes their career, perhaps the only escape route is death. And it is then that the endless wait for "something that will never come" will turn into a 4-second one, shorter but no less long. And maybe that's why after this album, the three girls decided to split up: to avoid ending up trapped in a prison of banality, monotony, and boredom.