Let’s Shake it Like Never Before: Sleater-Kinney Return with the Powerful No Cities to Love

Sleater-Kinney is an important band for a lot of people. Coming from influential riot-grrl acts Heavens to Betsy & Excuse 17, Corin Tucker & Carrie Brownstein began playing together in 1994, adding Janet Weiss a few years later, crafting a legacy and becoming one of the most celebrated indie rock bands of the last 20 years. Coming back together after a nearly 10 year hiatus (or breakup, whichever you prefer,) they aren’t coming back as quite the same band. Sure, by 2006 they had branched far beyond the underground punk scene they sprung out of, playing major music festivals and touring with acts like Pearl Jam. And in 2015, after Carrie Brownstein’s tenure on the sketch-comedy program Portlandia, they are bonafide celebrities. This past week they gave an interview with the women behind the comedy series Broad City and put out an arguably cloying music video featuring TV stars such as Connie Britton & Andy Samberg singing along to the title track of their new record. Sleater-Kinney have returned to the cultural landscape in a slightly different spot from where they were when they called it quits almost a decade ago. The question that remains, is how that has affected their music.

In an interview with Pitchfork, the members spoke about how they placed a tremendous amount of pressure on themselves for No Cities to Love, their triumphant comeback record. “On your third record, there is a next time. But there would not be a next time if we fucked this record up,” Carrie Brownstein said. Knowing they were coming back to the large expectations of old fans wary of reunions and new fans that discovered their music during the hiatus, the band spent years writing, recording, and fine tuning the ten songs here. The result is a wonderful album that fits firmly alongside the best in the band’s canon.

Sleater-Kinney has always been consistent in the sense that each album often sounds dramatically different from its predecessor. The understated and lovely “The Hot Rock” followed the emotional-punk powerhouse of Dig Me Out, and 2002’s dramatic, political One Beat was followed by the sprawling classic psych rock sounds of The Woods. No Cities To Love follows in that tradition, sounding fitting and familiar from what we’ve come to expect from the band, while also sounding not quite like anything the band has made yet.

On No Cities To Love, the trio made the smart decision of taking a direct and forceful approach. The 32-minute album is their shortest and tightest yet, containing no filler. The band chose to eschew the softer tracks and ballads they excel at as well, making the album a direct onslaught of forceful indie rock, miles ahead of what their peers are making. The album’s brevity hits that nice midpoint of being just enough to be satisfying while also leaving the listener wanting more.

While not inscrutable, No Cities to Love rewards as you spend more time with it, as you delve into the intricate play of Corin & Carrie’s twisted guitar lines. The two sound perfectly in sync with each other, trading licks back and forth that are wild but never off-putting. All this is backed up by Weiss’s tremendous drumming skills, which have only gotten better in the past ten years.

No Cities To Love plays to the bands strengths in pleasing ways. Given her increase in fame, it would not have been unreasonable to expect Carrie to take the lead here. Instead, Corin Tucker sings lead on nearly every track, anchoring the song with her commanding wails, which sound as immense as ever, as if she had been containing this power within for 10 years, waiting to let it out in an explosion. This is evidenced in the opening minutes of the album, as “Price Tag” takes less than a minute to kick the album into full force. By the first chorus, Corin comes through with one of her biggest hooks to date, taking on economic inequality and the role the more privileged play in perpetuating that. The brutality of the songs continues throughout, from the thunderous “Surface Envy” to the blistering “No Anthems,” a blues-influenced stomp that serves as an answer to the lack of big, sing-along choruses. While nothing here is as catchy as many of their classics, the combination of the title track and “A New Wave” come close. The latter is a great showcase of what Carrie brings to the table as a vocalist, where “No Cities To Love” stands out with the most soaring chorus on the record.

Then there’s the wild, tangled “Fade” that closes out the album, which closes the album with the line “If we are truly dancing our swan song, darling/let’s shake it like never before.” It’s a dramatic moment that shows that the band knows this could be the end, and want to make a defining statement. As a whole, No Cities To Love trounces expectations and holds up as one of the best the band has made to date. While they may be bigger celebrities than they were 10 years ago, they remain just as vital creatively, using the time away to craft a masterpiece that could easily be a contender for album of the year by December. It’s great to have Sleater-Kinney back, and if they choose not to continue past this, they picked a hell of an album to go out on.

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David Sackllah is a Houston-based music writer who has contributed to The Daily Texan, Do512 and Houston Press. He can be found on Twitter at @dsackllah