SLEATER-KINNEY at Sound Academy, Monday, March 2. Rating: NNNN
You don’t go to a Sleater-Kinney concert to have a blast. The music is too difficult to relax into – because it is difficult, unrelaxed music: constantly on the move guitar lines, hard-sung vocals restlessly shared between co-singers/guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, a nervy post-punk sound set against feminist lyrics with things to say. The Pacific Northwest trio work hard at every turn. If there are two bars free of singing between a chorus and verse, Brownstein fills them with another zingy riff.
You go to see rock heroes (and, for some people, a Portlandia star) at work. You go to throw gratitude and reverence toward women who have done things their own way, including making challenging, rule-breaking music that doesn’t sound like anybody else’s. You go to stand on your tiptoes to catch sight of powerful Janet Weiss pounding away at her kit while blowing into a harmonica. You go to see Brownstein make standard-issue cock-rock moves all her own. You go because this was a surprise reunion, and you might not get another chance.
Plus, the three-piece – aided intermittently by guitarist Katie Harkin (because why bother with a bass player when you can have THREE guitarists?) – executed the high-stress songwriting with relative ease at Sound Academy, on the last stop on this leg of a tour for bracing new album No Cities To Love. They played eight of its 10 songs, each proving that the band’s songwriting prowess – like their rep – has only increased during the eight-year hiatus.
Surface Envy’s gang-vocal chorus hit hard, No Anthems packed so much punch, A New Wave re-energized a waning crowd toward the set’s end. Old tunes kept pace: “Don’t wear me down,” they hollered during a fierce Entertain, from 2005’s The Woods. Brownstein pulled out some St. Vincentesque robot moves during 2002’s One Beat.
And how do such anti-slackers handle an encore? By playing not three, not four, not five, but six songs, wide smiles on their faces. It almost made us forget about how we were ever going to make our way back home from far-flung, inconveniently located Sound Academy. Almost.
music@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis
