Sleater-Kinney: 1995-2006.
Sleater-Kinney was the only band to survive the grunge and riot-grrl scenes, growing and evolving not only as artists, but as a cohesive unit. These girls were more than angry chicks with guitars; they were, according to Time magazine, the greatest American Rock band out there. Trying to find an apt metaphor to describe the dueling guitars of lead singer Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein was the new 'black' for music critics, inspiring grandiose phrases like "Napoleonic flourishes," "properly harnessed, this power could be more deadly than nuclear fission" and "their guitars are turned up not to eleven, but up to forty-seven", while Janet Weiss' drumming was inventive and distinctive. That says nothing of Corin's voice, expansive and full; with the hard rock riffs, it was like Sinead O'Conner in her prime fronting Led Zepplin in their prime. Hard, hard stuff, intricate, intense, and able to blend the personal and the political in ways that I can only wish of doing.
I am so bummed.
