“We just wanted things to really explode.” Mission accomplished, Corin Tucker.
In the leadup to Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods — which turns 20 years old this Saturday — Tucker, the band’s guitarist and powerhouse lead singer, was talking to Rolling Stone about the radically divergent approach the band had taken and the wildly different album that approach had yielded. It’s not like Sleater-Kinney had never evolved over the course of their first six albums, but there was a sense in which the band had been consistently refining and adjusting the same basic concept, perfecting an aesthetic that had made them one of the most fiercely beloved bands in rock. The Woods was by far their most extreme pivot, and Tucker wasn’t sure how longtime Sleater-Kinney fans would feel about it.
Tucker’s uncertainty was prescient. Not everyone approved of Sleater-Kinney’s transition from tenacious, politically charged punk-rock hook machine to blowtorch-wielding, Zeppelin-channeling, larger-than-life riff-rock deities. But apprehension or ambivalence toward The Woods makes no sense to me. It is a triumph, a towering achievement. It will blow you down and fuck you up. If it had turned out to be the final Sleater-Kinney album, as it appeared to be for a decade, it would have been the grandest possible finale. (As an ending, it certainly beats what has happened with the band in the years since their 2015 reunion.)
In the years after 2002’s post-9/11 rallying cry One Beat, Sleater-Kinney were in flux. Or maybe it’s fairer to say that after so much consistency, they wanted to be in flux. “A decade is a long time to be in a band,” guitarist Carrie Brownstein told The A.V. Club in 2005. “You almost feel a little bit sick of who you are.” They’d perfected their aesthetic, carved out a solid career, earned widespread acclaim beyond the confines of riot grrrl or whatever independent rock music scene you wanted to slot them into. But they were getting bored with being that version of Sleater-Kinney, and some behind-the-scenes circumstances had afforded them a convenient opportunity for change. Their publicist and booking agent had retired. Their contract with the storied Olympia indie label Kill Rock Stars had expired. Tucker had become a mom in the lead-up to One Beat, fueling much of the album’s anxiety about the state of the world, and was now in the thick of parenting. “Well, what is the future of this band, and why should there even be one?” Brownstein wondered. “Why do you keep making music after nearly a decade, or after six records?”
They decided to keep going and to try something new. Instead of re-upping with Kill Rock Stars, the label with which they’d become synonymous, they signed with Sub Pop, the biggest dog in Pacific Northwest indie rock. Instead of working with their longtime producer, the tried-and-true John Goodmanson, they flew across the country to record at Tarbox Road Studios in the snow-covered forests of western New York with Dave Fridmann, the mad-scientist Flaming Lips collaborator fond of ear-splitting volume and creative big swings. They did not completely abandon their signature sound, but they gave themselves freedom to venture far outside its confines, exploring the kind of blustery cock rock that could be viewed as anathema to their feminist punk heritage. The end result was staggering.
Opening fable “The Fox” introduces this new Sleater-Kinney in the most aggressive possible fashion. A peel of feedback gives way to a blown-out churn of guitars and virtuoso bashed-out drums that suggest Janet Weiss has tapped into her inner Keith Moon. Things only grow more forceful as the song goes on: the band ratcheting up its intensity, Tucker funneling all her lung capacity into some of the most unhinged banshee howls of her life, Fridmann shoving the mix all the way into the red until it sounds like the studio, the galaxy, and the very fabric of your soul are on fire. It’s abrasive, theatrical, incendiary, violent, overwhelming. It’s so fucking awesome.
“The Fox” is the inferno that burns away the facade of the old Sleater-Kinney. What remains underneath is more primal, more muscular, more startling. Plenty of tracks here tap into the band’s classic sound, but they’re shrouded in static like “Rollercoaster,” or they veer into unexpected directions, like when the bottom drops out of “What’s Mine Is Yours” and the song plunges into a bluesy primordial ooze, “Whole Lotta Love” style. Even when it escalates to monsters-of-rock scale, “Steep Air” moves with the noodly slipshod energy of a Stephen Malkmus riff, foretelling Weiss’ imminent tenure in the Pavement leader’s proggy second act, the Jicks. The power that Tucker had always conjured with her voice, that monolithic force of nature that feels like it might turn you to vapor on contact — it suddenly seemed to extend to the full Sleater-Kinney power trio, as if the three musicians had merged into a free-flowing super-powered entity.
The change of scenery unlocked some kind of fresh inspiration in Sleater-Kinney. Even the songs that did not feel particularly unique to The Woods hit so hard, and not merely because of Fridmann’s production. “Wilderness” is constructed brilliantly; after lulling you into stability with some singsong, Tucker’s voice shoots upward into lightning-strike mode at just the right moment in the chorus, only for the riffs and fills on the bridge to tumble downward like an avalanche. Brownstein’s pinched grunts and growls exist in perfect balance with Tucker’s furious wails on “Entertain,” all the more when Weiss locks into a military march and a gang chant breaks out. A similar dynamic plays out on “Jumpers,” as the two singers lock into an eerie unison on the verses before Tucker cuts loose on the chorus — then, the bridge once again unleashes a torrent of guitar action, as if someone ripped open a bag of riffs and they all came spilling out the side.
Even the quiet parts of The Woods are noisy. “Modern Girl,” which became the titular inspiration for Brownstein’s memoir, is a rare moment of gentleness and prettiness but not necessarily a respite from the chaos. It’s a satire in which Brownstein, in character, sings about the perfect existence funded by her romantic partner (“My whole life was like a picture of a sunny day!”) only to watch all the purchasing power go away when they break up. The distortion and intensity keep increasing until the cheery backdrop starts to feel uncanny. It’s a Sleater-Kinney song unlike any other at the heart of a Sleater-Kinney album unlike any other.
Yet for all its sonic differences, “Modern Girl” is one of many songs that suggest The Woods is not entirely a retreat from the politics and social commentary that defined One Beat. The record was definitely more personal and opaque on balance: “We went inward with the things we wanted to say,” Tucker told RS, “and I think the intensity of the record is reflective of the political and cultural climate that we’ve been living in.” And yeah, starting your album with a narrative about a duck and a fox is not the most direct method of communication. But something like “Entertain,” with its jabs at retro nostalgia, reality TV, and the artificiality of our mediated existence, is as sharp a critique as any in this band’s catalog. Tucker spends “What’s Yours Is Mine” fantasizing about wrecking that kind of false paradise. “Jumpers,” inspired by a New Yorker story about depressed and lonely people who leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge, further explores the decaying effects of modern society. “Wilderness” follows a young couple, named after Brownstein’s parents, who struggle to hold it together. It’s an album about people whose problems and passions clash with the clean-lined American narrative, one where it’s not hard to see how the personal becomes political.
With that in mind, The Woods is also an album about reclaiming the genre’s most macho maneuvers and rocking the fuck out, so it’s only fitting for it all to end in an extended blaze of glory. The last two songs — the 11-minute behemoth “Let’s Call It Love” and its four-minute denouement, “Night Light” — are the product of one continuous, largely improvised take. It’s one last punk taboo for the road, the blues-rock jam session, and it becomes a final chance for Tucker, Brownstein, and Weiss to do what they all do best. Over the course of those minutes, Sleater-Kinney hit us with a mangled barrage of vocal and instrumental prowess that plays like their own extended “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” moment, a voyage to the end of coherence that melts down into one last statement of purpose. “How do you do it? This bitter and bloody world/ Keep it together and shine for your family,” Tucker sings amidst the stomping downbeats and untamed guitar filling up the empty space. “How do you do it with visions of worst to come?/ Live in the present and spin off the rays of the sun.” The Woods doesn’t resolve those questions, but it offers a thrilling picture of defiance against all kinds of forces that might try to rein you in.
