album review: sleater-kinney's "dig me out."

Sleater-Kinney's music is best described as manic. Verses and bridges are slow, terrorizing builds that explode into psychotic climaxes of choruses where screamed declarations and pounding drums are layered over driving guitar harmonies. 1997’s “Dig Me Out,” their third and most seminal album, personifies this mania more than any other record the iconic riot grrrl trio has put out. The savvy sophistication that is heard on later albums – the critically acclaimed “One Beat,” for example – isn’t there yet, but neither is the lumbering experimentalism that characterizes Sleater-Kinney’s earlier recordings. On “Dig Me Out,” the band is in control, but you get the feeling that it’s only because they want to be.

Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s vocals are interlocking parts that make up a sonic puzzle, one that can only really be described as discordant harmony. Listening to them together is an unnerving, if unparalleled experience that sets ablaze tracks like the angsty “All the Drama You’ve Been Craving” and the euphoric “Words and Guitar.”

But it is the more reserved tracks where “Dig Me Out” is at its most beautifully cathartic. “Dance Song ‘97” is a tribute to confused infatuation with a charmingly kitschy musical aesthetic and some of the most memorable guitar work in Sleater-Kinney’s entire discography, while the agonized “Jenny” is a heartrending narration that pulls no punches in its description of heartbreak and loss. Sleater-Kinney has, somehow, invented and engineered the impossible: the punk ballad. Poignancy meets disillusionment in a series of soft yet still very intense tracks that mesh better with the band's identity than a listener might expect after hearing 1996’s “Call the Doctor.”

Even when put into context as part of riot grrrl’s wonder years, “Dig Me Out” is a remarkable album for its ability to exist on the edge, always close to tumbling over into sheer mania but holding it in – just barely.

4/5. 

album review: pete krebs' "brigadier"

Best remembered for sharing an LP with the late & great Elliott Smith, Pete Krebs has amassed a surprising number of fans and musical credentials over the years. After fronting Hazel with Jody Bleyle of Team Dresch in the early 1990s, Krebs put out a number of solo folk albums on Cavity Search Records. "Brigadier" was the first of these records, put out in 1995, and perhaps the best.


Most singer-songwriters shove their feelings into a listener's face via the album-long narrative, packing their angst into a series of dull, labored accounts of romances gone wrong and rainy nights in empty coffee bars. Pete Krebs doesn't do that. Though the songs on the album are unmistakably meant to be linked together, they are linked with subtle agility that lets them dodge cliche status; "Brigadier" isn't a bad break-up album or a mid-life crisis album or even a dewey-eyed 'debut' album. But it is a story. From the quietly passionate first verse of "D Tune Drop" to the dark, harrowing climax of "Kiss," Krebs plays narrator, earnestly relating a series of reflections and thoughts that are half stream-of-consciousness, half self-deprecating joke. Metaphors are woven into personal memories, dialogues are woven into acerbic commentaries, and sarcasm is woven into sentimentality. Throughout, "Brigadier" is pain-stakingly honest without, miraculously, ever being vacuous or annoying.

While some are likely to notice that Krebs' whispery, suppressed vocals are reminescent of Elliott Smith (which they are, like it or not), he is very distinguishable from Smith (and the growing pool of Smith wannabes) in that he never deals in misery or caves to his more depressive impulses. After the somber "Orleans Parish" comes the twangy, upbeat "Truman;" after the anguished, battering "Bad Penny" comes the soothing "Mean Time." There is a sweet, almost pastoral quality to Krebs' work, in part because of the classical folk and country traditions that he borrows so heavily from. In this case, his derivation pays off: it makes what would otherwise be Just Another Indie-Rock Record become an absolutely beautiful folk record.

Sixteen years after its release, "Brigadier" still sounds fresh, a mark of its possible timelessness. And even when Krebs takes a turn for the calculatedly indie ("every bicycle looks like yours'" could only be a lyric penned for the not-yet out-of-diapers "Juno" generation), he's put more honesty into "Brigadier" than some musicians put into their entire discographies. With its understated brand of confessionalism, "Brigadier" is a success.

4.5/5

rip - poly styrene.

Punk lost one of its most influential figures when Poly Styrene, formerly of X-Ray Spex, passed away yesterday.

X-Ray Spex's first and only album, "Germ-Free Adolescents," has become a genre staple since it was put out in 1978, ranked as the eighth best punk album of all-time by The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Styrene's vividly harsh lyrical commentaries on misogyny, commercialism, and youth culture set the Spex apart from other acts of the time, while her shrill, shouted vocals have all but birthed the riot grrrl punk movement of the 1990s.

Though her very existence seemed to defy the genre's once-rigid standards of both race and gender, Styrene  went a step further and eschewed the prototypical punk "look" in favor of a more unconventional persona. She rejected leather and safety pins for vibrantly colored dresses and thick braces. She rejected androgyny or sex-symbol status for a more realistic model of femininity. Essentially, Styrene rejected everything that punk expected of her and pushed her way through the industry until she reached the status of icon, with or without the approval of EMI and the English rock press. If that's not punk rock, I don't know what is.

As if they were at all forgettable, take a few minutes to remember how truly spectacular X-Ray Spex were:

"she had the greatest band."

Teenage girl music was at its prime in the late '90s, with everyone from the Spice Girls to P.J. Harvey cashing in on the power-pop phenomenon that lent itself so achingly well to narrating teenage maladies. In the middle of it all was the sunny-sweet yet oh-so-sulky Juliana Hatfield, who happily spent the last few years of the 20th century head-bobbing her way through fuzzy guitar pop perfection.

Unlike many of her peers, Hatfield never had a "Seether" or a "Supernova" to immortalize her, meaning that her Internet presence today consists mostly of Comic Sans ridden fan-pages from 1997 and maybe the occasional Pitchfork nostalgia piece. But she's still not easy to forget. Gems like "My Sister" can't be described as anything besides classic.