Sleater Kinney know all about being trapped, as their new album suggests.
Photo: IMAGO/Newscom World
Sleater-Kinney are like a fine wine: popular with middle-aged, highly educated people. It is said that good wine gets better with age; from bad bands, they offer old wine in new bottles. To set the record straight: the Château Sleater-Kinney de Washington winery has created “Little Rope,” a fruity-tart premium wine that has a sweet finish and can certainly make you tipsy.
It is definitely not old wine, but if the winemakers, the location and the grape variety remain the same, you are at least safe from unpleasant surprises. You know what you’re getting and you know you like it. The tried and tested Sleater-Kinney sound with its combination of melodic, sweet vocals and brutal guitars does not fail to have an effect this time either. The music is held together by skilful songwriting that brings both elements to bear without giving either of them the upper hand, and that rarely gives in to the temptation to use both at the same time: “a lot of everything” would be overwhelming or boring in the long run. Used selectively, the mixture really packs a punch.
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You can read the lyrics of the resulting songs carefully, you can sing them along with emotion and you can also ignore them if only the instrumental music should count. It invites, it animates, but it doesn’t force anything, which is one of its greatest advantages. Really every song is incredibly catchy, but unlike an inescapable catchy loop, this imprisonment is voluntary.
Many of the song lyrics also deal with being trapped: trapped in one’s own quirks and moods, trapped in love, trapped in the hell of the present. Other topics include being locked up voluntarily to keep the hostile and overwhelming outside world at bay, but also being persecuted and locked up. Being different, not being good enough, is also discussed again and again. To put it abstractly: The album explores with some consistency the relationship between inside and outside, first and second person, weakness and power. All of this is already contained in the album title, which is taken from the lyrics to “Small Finds”. A rope can bind and bind; “Gimme a little rope” can mean “let it go / be lenient,” and in the song the line has a humorous sexual ambivalence: “You may think it’s vulgar / But I think I’m in love.” “Small finds” stands out with its kinky humor, as does “Crusader,” the only political song on the album. To a powerful disco beat, a right-wing culture warrior is expelled and the tables are turned: being different does not isolate, but rather unites into a strong, solidarity-based community.
“Little Rope” is not just another Sleater-Kinney album. It’s overall static, dark and introverted, like the semicircular atrium in which the band members pose on the back of the album. Unfortunately, the significance of the graphic design cannot be discussed here, but it is really worth buying this album in a physical format because, as we wine connoisseurs say, it gives it more body.
Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope (Loma Vista) The author has lived “straight edge” since 2003 and has no idea about wine.
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