4 out of 5

Label: Sub Pop

Produced by: John Goodmanson

Are we ready for Sleater-Kinney to drop their ‘mature’ album?  The tag can be a sign of a transition point for band, between evolving and attracting new listeners and turning into a house project that’s just playing for its fans.  But S-K have been around long enough now that they’ve passed into classy, comfortable cool well before this disc.  So there’s no need to play for the fans.  Instead, calling ‘No Cities’ a mature disc is a massive compliment: in the goddamn ten years since their fuck-off masterpiece ‘The Woods,’ Corin, Carrie and Janet have had time to do their own things.  Of course, they’ve always been busy creative types, hands constantly in the music world or one form or another of media, but being able to step fully away from an element that’s defined you – this band in this case – can be a game changer.  And so they return to recording feeling fully confident in what they want to bring to our speakers.  There’s not a single song on here that I would say sounds like a generic S-K track, while at the same time, pieces of the classic sound pop up frequently, blended with the experimentation of ‘One Beat’ and the bombast of ‘Woods.’  It’s an ideal blend.  Goodmanson is the king of layered and heavy pop (see Harvey Danger’s ‘King James Version’ or The Blood Brothers’ final two amazing albums) and everyone in the group has learned to chill out a bit, the trio’s frequently busy playing styles surging to maximize the head-bobbable nature of any given track.  Some tracks certainly drift closer to old school than others – the title track, or it’s followup ‘A New Wave,’ – but then you have some definite rockers like opening track ‘Price Tag’ and more open-ended explorations like the appropriately titled closing track ‘Fade.’  But nothing is stagnant; everything has a clear hook, words you can remember.

The break, though, may have distilled some urgency in Corin’s lyrics, the topics here feeling like vague sentiments of disconnect.  She sings with passion, but the rather generic concepts don’t really add much to the songs, and are the only weak part of the disc… so, perhaps, the only downside of that ‘maturity,’ that we’re sort of more okay with things when there’s not a president we hate (‘One Beat’s focus) and stuff in the world is maybe okey dokey for a while.

‘No Cities to Love’ is a professionally composed album, synced 100% with its producer, who’s grown up crafting his art with the band as well.  It lacks a bit of urgency, but that by no means means that any aspect of the disc was phoned in.