Sleater-Kinney 'Digs' guitar rock out of the past

SLEATER-KINNEY

Dig Me Out (Kill Rock Stars)

There are plenty of good albums, but too few great ones. While I've only owned Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out for three days, I've already placed it on my short stack of great albums. Nothing I've heard in the last year has moved me like Dig Me Out.

That's what Sleater-Kinney do best: move you, both emotionally and physically. Dig Me Out is an album to stand in front of a mirror and play air guitar to. It's an album to blare when your lover leaves you. It's an album to get stoned to. It's an album to scream along to while driving recklessly down I-95. Hell, it's a great album to have sex to. Forget aesthetics; uses like these are what make a great album.

I'm gushing about Dig Me Out because it helped me rediscover an enthusiasm for rock music. Spin, Rolling Stone, MTV, and schlock modern-rock radio have been pontificating that guitar rock's goin' bye-bye, to be replaced by the blips and thumps of the new electronica heroes. And even musicians are buying into the craze (see David Bowie and U2's latest, with many other artists to follow). Dig Me Out responds to the fallacy of the death of the guitar in a furious way.

The dominant theme of Get Me Out is the power of rock music. There's no irony here--the women of Sleater-Kinney know how rock music can influence people and they take it seriously. Sleater-Kinney understand the force of loud guitars. On "Words + Guitar," an updated "We Will Rock You," the message is simple: "Can't take this away from me / Music is the air I breathe." Sleater-Kinney claim they're going to "Rock you till you're good and dead / Rock you till there's nothing left," and achieve that objective.

Great albums complicate categorization. While some might lump Sleater-Kinney into a "queercore" or "post-riot grrrl" (or whatever) movement (they are angry, aggressive women, no doubt), the music, pure rock n' roll, defies those labels. Singer/guitarist Corin Tucker pulls out plenty of stock rock moves, shouting lines like "Shake it baby!" and "Dum-dum-diddy-dum-dum-de-dum, yeah!" Again, no irony.

The key to Sleater-Kinney's synthesis was hinted at on their last album (the stellar Call the Doctor, on Chainsaw Records) when Corin Tucker fantasized: "I wanna be your Joey Ramone" and "I wanna be your Thurston Moore." Sleater-Kinney brings together the best of the Ramones and Sonic Youth: they craft driving, catchy pop-punk anthems that subtly employ guitar virtuosity and sonic invention. Unlike many bands today, Sleater-Kinney are tight. There are no "endearing" mistakes on this album, no pre-song joking around or post-song feedback. Every note or word is deliberate and precise. And unlike bands which obsess over technical precision, Sleater-Kinney play their instruments with emotion and intensity. The sparse but powerful drumming of Janet Weiss holds together the big, explosive guitar sounds. These women don't need a bass player.

And then there's that voice. Corin Tucker has an utterly unique vocal style. Her massive, operatic range has prompted legendary rock critic Greil Marcus to call her "the most interesting singer in the United States." He's right--but interesting has to be the most bland word one could choose to describe Tucker's voice. It is unsettling, volcanic, stentorian, neurotic, erotic, quivering, shrieking, wailing, roaring, blissful, ecstatic--all at the same time.

On Call the Doctor Tucker expresses another fantasy: to be "the Queen of Rock and Roll." While in 1996 this ambition sounded like wishful thinking, I for one think she's earned the crown.

--Josh Westlund

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