3 out of 5

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Producer: John Goodmanson

‘One Beat’ is an amazing, amazing track, perhaps one of S-K’s best.  The staccato guitar interplay like a simplified version of the typical Sleater-Kinney sound – which just makes it sound more raw and immediate – and Janet Weiss slowing down her kit work to deliver a marching beat.  Combined with ‘Beat’s’ production, which looks forward to ‘Woods’ in opening up the sound landscapes and letting all of it reverb, the anger of the lyrics and intensity of Tucker’s vocals are the synthesis of everything the group could’ve been said to have been building toward.

Second track ‘Far Away’ seems to continue the trend, except now we’re reaching back even to ‘Call the Doctor’ for when this was a fuckin’ rock group, the core riff and beat driving the song pummeling over most of the content on the more playful ‘All Hands on the Bad One.’  It’s also our first note of confusion for the disc, though, as it morphs into a more generic S-K track for the chorus (the high-low vocals, and more ‘rolling’ sound to the guitars and drums), and as Tucker mentions the president in the lyrics, we get to understand that this is a post 9/11 track woot woot.  Everyone has/had a right to respond, of course, and music is just as good of a way to work through our thoughts as any other format, but when Tucker has a specific topic, her words tend to feel exclusionary, to me, putting me outside of the song.  But on we go to track three ‘Oh!’.  Hey, there’s Carrie Brownstein singing, and normally her cutesy sing-songy vocals are countered well with Corin’s more aggressive trill, but… listen to those synths on this track, and the ‘ooh ooh’ backings, and the surf-rock bip-bop beat…  It’s a very friendly track, and thus a trend for the album: that on much of it, the experimentation seems to go hand-in-hand with making the sound more accessible.

Now there’s no denying that each unexpected element (vocal effects and strings on ‘The Remainder’, horns on ‘Step Aside,’ ) or unusual-for-the-group song structure (‘Remainder’s’ slowed-down catchy riff/easy chorus top 20 sensibilities, ‘Combat Rock’s Clash swipe, ‘Prisstina’s’ obnoxious preciousness) are all committed with incredible skill; if this was your first Sleater-Kinney disc, you’d assume they’d always been rockin’ this way.  And it appeals to Goodmanson at his best – already having learned to step back and let the ladies fill the room with their songs’ inherent fire, he gets along well with noisy layers (see Harvey Danger or Blood Brothers), and so every piece of ‘Beat’ is rich and lush; close your eyes and this is live and in your room.

It’s just a confusing listen because of that experimental / radio-friendly duality, which definitely undercuts the group’s generally more aggressive stance.  The girl pop stuff has always been somewhat kept in check with the dueling Tucker/Brownstein nature of the band, but here we’re allowed full-on Murmurs stuff with Brownstein going full ‘coo’ mode at some points and some lyrics that are just delightful if you’re in high school (‘Prisstina’).  Judging it from outside of the group’s general output, these are great pop songs with some depth, and you can certainly hear and feel how this stepped into ‘The Woods’, the band sussing out different territories so they could point at one and go all out.   (…And I’m happy they chose the fuzzed up loud-as-shit territory.)

‘One Beat’ gets off to a refreshing start for seasoned listeners, but thereafter gets mixed in lyrical tone and intention.  A few spins help to wash some of this perplexity away so you can just get on board for how the thing slips in and out of awesomeness (‘O2’ playing at S-K norms before exploding into one of the disc’s more ear-rattling efforts), but it still lacks the overall lasting value of some of their previous albums.