Dear Evelyn:
It is funny how we see things so differently. I think Sleater-Kinney is a great catalyst for what we’re talking about because, with the possible exception of Courtney Love, whose pronounced ambitions are at once persuasive and ludicrous, Sleater-Kinney’s ambitions operate on the macro level like no other artist we’re talking about. Am I projecting? I dunno, listen:
I wanna be your Joey Ramone / Pictures of me on your bedroom door / Invite you back after the show / I’m the queen of rock ’n’ roll.
When Corin Tucker wails those words on Call the Doctor, the sober listener could be forgiven for not quite believing what he or she had just heard. The song’s moody verses studiously avoid revealing whether the song is about a personal romance serving as a metaphor for a fixation on a rock star, or vice versa. Then comes an eruption–a call-and-response volley of “yeah”s on a par with a similarly exuberant recitation of the same word by four guys from England many years ago; and then, with no warning, the arresting words I quoted above. The first line is a tip of the hat to the lead singer of the Ramones, the true American godfathers of modern punk rock, of whose lineage Sleater-Kinney are a proud part. The second line fixes the fan solidly in her room; the third line adds a sudden and unexpected sexual charge to the song; and then the last suddenly breaks things wide open, as the singer, caught up in the fantasy, leaves the thoughts of her would-be lover behind and gets caught up in the idea of being a rock star.
Or perhaps, again, vice versa.
Anyway, anyone who can sing the words “I’m the queen of rock ’n’ roll” and make it reverberate on that level–while at the same time delivering a defensible musical setting for the role–is on to something. But I’m not sure what’s up on The Hot Rock. The group still seems to be ambitious; the first number, “Start Together,” is a classic S-K rave-up, with a giant, rumbling instrumentation and head-snapping control of dynamics. And throughout the record the group presses ahead with its most daring and searching conceit: the tumbling, contrapuntal dual vocals that more than anything else capture the confusion of voices in the heads of the woman and girl characters of the songs. Even in a unmemorable song like “Burn, Don’t Freeze!,” the near hysteria of Tucker’s lead vocal is undercut, soothed, and assuaged by Carrie Brownstein’s accompanying vocal track.
But then the record becomes musically joyless. Song textures–which is basically what we get for the rest of the album–are a crutch. The group tries to sound like Sonic Youth on a couple of tracks, with none of that group’s awesome musical control. (That leaves just the pretentiousness–and let me tell you, pretentiousness doesn’t mix well with punk rock.) “Get Up,” particularly, has uncomfortable similarities to the Sonic Youth song “Tunic.” Another track, “God Is a Number,” is a banal rant against technology. What little nuance there is in the song is overwhelmed by its wrongheadedness; new technology of course is the thing that might help the band achieve a fulfilling and remunerative stardom on its own terms. “Living in Exile” is unpleasant to listen to. “The End of You” is energetic but not convincing. The last song, “A Quarter to Three,” just sort of drifts off.
The saddest thing about the record is that the response I think it’s going to engender in a lot of people is one that can be crushing for artists: Eager expectation and assessment, then quick uninterest after the record reveals itself as nothing much to talk about. You work for a year on a record, and no one likes it–and then the expectations for the next one just get heightened!
Which brings us back to the real world again. Anyone’s allowed a dud release; Tucker’s seething charisma and the group’s dogged attack make it unlikely that they’re not going to be around for a while. But thinking about where Sleater-Kinney will go reminds me of some of the other things we were talking about, particularly since they may be uniquely positioned to deal with them. There is of course the pervasive sexism of the record industry, in which women are trivialized–artistically, in marketing campaigns, you name it. Female industry staffers tend to be ghettoized in the P.R. departments. Indeed, the ingrained sexism and power issues distort what should be an economic imperative. I mean, chicks sell, right? In theory the industry should be recording women in exact relation to the economic benefit of it. But as Sarah McLachlan demonstrated convincingly with the Lilith Fair tour, that has not been the case.
Here’s another issue. In the New York Times recently, there was a story about woman filmmakers. Same phenomenon there: Why are there so few woman directors even in the so-called indie film world, and why aren’t the women who have made movies making more of them? Surprise, surprise: The independent milieu is as blatantly sexist as the mainstream one. But there were subtler points delineated as well. Someone in the article said something to the effect that “I don’t know any women who’d run up a $10,000 bill on their credit card to make a movie.” And in film, of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg: It means running up your parents’ and friends’ credit-card bills as well, and systematically exploiting a lot of people to get the thing finished. And for every Steven Soderbergh this system produces–which is to say, someone who provides something of at least defensible artistic worth and presumably pays back his investors–there are probably 100 others with a commercial and artistic flop on their hands, and a lot of friends and relatives the poorer for the experience.
The parallel in the rock world is plain. It’s: “C’mon, guys and gals, drive around in an uninsured van with me for three years. I’ll write the songs and be the front person and get all the attention in general and the sexual sort in particular; you stay in the background and just do what I say. You can eat bad food, sleep on floors, have your equipment stolen regularly, be the butt of jokes, and take a shower a week. And by the way, I’ll be the star, and in the end you’ll go back to tending bar in Minneapolis and I’ll be Paul Westerberg, boy genius, with a comfortable living ahead of me courtesy of my songwriting residuals.”
In other words, there’s a way the industry demands unattractive and exploitative behavior as the price of success; a lot of people, men and women, refuse to pay it. Sleater-Kinney, in this context, are interesting. It seems as if they’re trying to keep their world sane. They stick together with a select coterie of support. If their songwriting skills hold out, and their records do grow in popularity, they might be able to go large on their own terms over a sensible period of time.
At the same time, you have to worry. There is a tide in the affairs of even female rock stars. Shallows, miseries, and could-have-beens may be what’s left for those who miss it, as Alex Chilton and any number of others will tell you.
Bill
P.S.: I like your Missy Elliott-as-producer idea. Just as long as it’s not Steve Albini.
P.P.S.: It was stupid of me to say Aretha Franklin didn’t write songs. I meant, of course, that the vast majority of her dozens of hits were written by others.
P.P.P.S.: I saw Lauryn Hill in concert last night. Turns out she’s a visionary ecstatic. Her show coursed through about 40 years of black pop, from the Jackson 5 to Bob Marley to Run-D.M.C. to Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life,” from the blues to turntablism. A 15-piece band provided pop, hip-hop, or reggae backing as she needed it; and her all-encompassing, magnanimous presence exquisitely formed each song–ballad or rave-up, hit or cover. The ballads, particularly, were almost hallucinatorily transporting; the upbeat songs were noisy and joyous. Marvin Gaye was skirting similar territory in his “What’s Going On” period, from the evidence I’ve heard; in my day, only Bruce Springsteen has even flirted with such sensory transformation in a live setting. Hill provided, for a few hours in a cavernous auditorium, a glimpse of a world in which a very young genius can make gender, race, and genre (even sex!) irrelevant–indeed, meld them all into a seamless mélange of music, life, and being. In other words, a much better world than the one the transported crowd members were faced with as they walked out into the cold San Francisco night. It may have been the most perfect rock ’n’ roll show I’ve ever seen.
