Sleater-Kinney played their first live show in years on February 8, 2015 in at the Knitting Factory in Spokane, Washington.
From the clips you can see what an incredible show it was. The group is as impassioned as ever.
I saw them at a number of shows first time around, from one at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, to an all-ages show in Olympia, Washington to a great night at Irving Plaza in New York. Plus shows at the Great American Music Hall and The Fillmore.
They were all incredible. Check out these clips from a few nights ago to see and hear how amazing this band is right now.
“Price Tag”:
“Get Up” (partial):
“Sympathy”:
“Jumpers”:
Encore
“Dig Me Out”:
“Turn It On” (partial):
“Modern Girl”:
Don’t know what song this fairly short clip is from:
Setlist:
‘Price Tag’
‘Fangless’
‘Start Together’
‘Oh!’
‘No Anthems’
‘Get Up’
‘Ironclad’
‘One Beat’
‘Bury Our Friends’
‘What’s Mine Is Yours’
‘One More Hour’
‘No Cities to Love’
‘Surface Envy’
‘Words and Guitar’
‘Sympathy’
‘A New Wave’
‘Entertain’
‘Jumpers’
‘Gimme Love’
‘Dig Me Out’
‘I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone’
‘Turn It On’
‘Modern Girl’
Today we get another track off the upcoming Sleater-Kinney album, No Cities To Love, out on Sub Pop January 20, 2015.
The song is “Surface Envy,” and if the previous song, “Bury Our Friends,” didn’t wake you up to the fact that Sleater-Kinney are back, this one should do the trick.
Dig it!
And if you missed it, here’s “Bury Our Friends”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
One of my favorite bands of all time, and one of the most important to emerge during the ’90s, Sleater-Kinney are back from an eight-year hiatus and will release a new album, No Cities To Love, on January 20, 2015.
During the break Corin Tucker has released to Corin Tucker Band albums and devoted time to her family. Most recently she was recording and performing as part of a supergroup with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck that they were calling super-Earth. Carrie Brownstein played in Wild Flag and co-created and co-starred in “Portlandia.” Weiss has played drums in a number of situations including Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.
First song to be released is “Bury Our Friends,” with a lyric video featuring director and longtime Sleater-Kinney friend, Miranda July.
“Bury Our Friends”:
In an email to NPR, guitarist/singer Carrie Brownstein wrote:
“I feel like creativity is about where you want your blood to flow. Because in order to do something meaningful and powerful there has to be life inside of it. Maybe after The Woods that blood had thinned; we felt enervated, the focus had become disparate and diffuse. We drifted apart in order to concentrate on other elements of our lives and careers. Sleater-Kinney isn’t something you can do half-assed or half-heartedly. We have to really want it. And you have to feed that hunger and have the energy to. I’m not saying we need to be in a dark place to be in Sleater-Kinney. In fact, we could be in the best places in our lives. But we have to be willing to push, because the entity that is this band will push right back.
“We had no desire to revisit sounds and styles and paths we had treaded before. But in order to move forward, Corin and I worked together in a way that was more reminiscent of earlier albums like Dig Me Out. Meaning that we would write just the two of us and then bring songs to Janet later on in the process. I think we had to go back to an earlier model of writing in order to reacquaint ourselves with the language of the band. It’s a sonic vernacular that isn’t easily translated into other contexts in which we’ve played. This was a very deliberate writing process, there were many edits and iterations of the songs. We thought a lot about melody and structure.
“I spent a lot of time writing choruses for this record. Melody is what I was most picky about. I really drove Corin crazy sometimes. We would have choruses that we would work on for hours, days, maybe on and off over a matter of weeks. And we’d think we had solved it, but then I would listen to it later on and decide to discard it, that it wasn’t good enough. I did that with my guitar parts too. In the end we were all more scrutinizing with our own parts than we ever have been. I think we didn’t want to take any second of the song for granted, everything had to have an intention and earn its place.”
No Cities To Love Track List:
1. Price Tag
2. Fangless
3. Surface Envy
4. No Cities To Love
5. A New Wave
6. No Anthems
7. Gimme Love
8. Bury Our Friends
9. Hey Darling
10. Fade
And there will be a tour:
2015 Tour Dates:
02-08-15 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
02-09-15 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory
02-10-15 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
02-12-15 Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater
02-13-15 Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
02-14-15 Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
02-15-15 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
02-17-15 Chicago, IL @ Riviera
02-22-15 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
02-24-15 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
02-26-15 New York, NY @ Terminal 5
02-28-15 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
03-01-15 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
03-18-15 Berlin, Germany @ Postbahnhof
03-19-15 Amsterdam, The Netherlands @ Paradiso
03-20-15 Paris, France @ Cigale
03-21-15 Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix
03-23-15 London, UK @ Roundhouse
03-24-15 Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
03-25-15 Glasgow, UK @ O2 ABC
03-26-15 Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Could this flyer mean that a new Sleater-Kinney album is on the way?
Previously unheard Sleater-Kinney song, “Bury Our Friends,” included with new box set, Start Together.
“Bury Our Friends”:
It’s rumored that there will be a new Sleater-Kinney album released January 20, 2015 called No Cities To Love, but that’s a RUMOR and nothing more at this point.
Sleater-Kinney is Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss.
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Peter Buck, Corin Tucker, Bill Rieflin, Krist Novoselic and Scott McCaughey in the studio. Photo by Lance Bangs.
The other day I posted about the debut performance by super-Earth, the new supergroup formed by Peter Buck and Corin Tucker. Not it turns out that Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic is also in the band.
These two photos are by Lance Bangs. The group is currently recording. No news on song titles or when recordings will be available.
ucker, Buck, Kurt Bloch, Bill Rieflin, Novoselic, and Scott McCaughey in the studio. Photo by Lance Bangs.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Corin Tucker & Peter Buck at Secret Society in Portland. Photo via The Oregonian.
Last night super-Earth, the new band that finds Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck collaborating, performed in Portland at Secret Society, opening for Buck.
The group played 12 songs that David Greenwald of The Oregonian wrote were “so fresh, Tucker had lyric sheets.”
More from Greenwald’s review:
The occasional look to her music stand didn’t stop Tucker, still one of the best rock singers working, from commanding a room that had filled in by the time super-Earth took the stage. The new material, speedy and loud, was full of power chords, enthusiasm and the occasional signature Buck arpeggio — less punk rock than power-pop but always knife-sharp. It sounded like an album: hopefully it will be.
In addition to Buck and Tucker, super-Earth includes guitarist Scott McCaughey (Minus 5), drummer Bill Rieflin (Swans, Ministry), and guitarist Kurt Bloch (ex-Fastbacks).
The group are currently working on an album, according to the Portland Mercury.
Buck and Tucker have worked together in the past. Tucker sang on both of Buck’s solo albums.
Here are two songs on Peter Buck albums featuring Tucker:
“Drown With Me”:
“Nothing Means Nothing”:
Plus Pearl Jam, Sleater Kinney, Peter Buck and members of his band do “Rockin’ in the Free World” November 29, 2013:
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
“Portlandia” star Carrie Brownstein suggested during an interview posted at Stereogum today that the Sleater-Kinney story isn’t over yet.
Asked if Sleater-Kinney will reunite, Brownstein said:
I’m not sure. It’s a hard question. This is something I was actually talking about with Tavi Gevinson who does Rookie Mag. I’m such a fan of hers and her writing, and we were having coffee in Portland and we were just talking about how when something is very tied to a certain time in your life — it’s sometimes hard to reenter that at a different age or with a different perspective. So, it’s like finding a way into the container that is Sleater-Kinney, finding a way of entering that with something that isn’t necessarily as urgent as it was for me when I was 22. What I appreciate about Sleater-Kinney is that we did six records and they all felt different. It was a band that was able to encapsulate different sensibilities because we were focusing on it as music and art and not as a statement. That was something other people ascribed to it more than we did. So I would be curious. I think we have more to say. I think we ended at a time when it wasn’t tapering off, actually. I would be curious to know what the rest of the story is with that band.
The three former members of Sleater-Kinney — Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss — reunited last night to perform “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam at Portland’s Moda Center.
Also participating was Peter Buck, formerly of R.E.M.
YouTube video of the song:
Here are more fan photos:
Sleater-Kinney performing “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam in 2003.
