Dear Bill,
I’m afraid I’m going to start repeating myself if I address many of your questions, and I’d rather move the discussion along than bore screen-jumpy readers with too much text. Let me just say that while I detest all that Venus-Mars shit, I’m beginning to wonder if we really do live on different planets. On my planet, the Rolling Stones are mere savvy followers of fashion, leaders of nothing; Dylan a good songwriter and lousy singer; while Aretha Franklin not only wrote songs but brilliantly rearranged others’, so that she could make “Respect” the anthem Otis never quite managed, and so that one pundit at the time referred to ‘67 as the summer of “Retha, Rap, and Revolt.” Jagger wishes. Joni, Chrissie, and Patti are certainly larger than life, and they remain so with dignity, not as the pathetic mercenary jokes the Stones have become. This is why we need more women writing the history books, defining the canon, shaping the pantheon. Our perspectives can be quite different.
One small quibble: Five hundred “Pazz and Jop” critics nominated Lucinda. There’s a reason Bob Christgau called it that instead of a rock critics’ poll.
I like to think of rock as an expansive enough category to include Lucinda, Public Enemy, Lauryn Hill, etc., but since on day one you defined it formally as dominated by men–and because I think it takes second seat to R&B and hip-hop for today’s pop audience, for good reasons–I’m still avoiding it as the rubric for our argument.
Indeed, I think Sleater-Kinney named their new album The Hot Rock ironically for these very reasons. I agree with you: It’s no breakthrough, a bit of a disappointment after the emotional one-two punch of Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out. I think they were too busy trying to prove themselves within rock’s narrow confines and concerns–trying to be the female Yo La Tengo (they share a producer) or Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (they’ve shared stages), instead of rewriting the game. The production is too ironic and subdued; it doesn’t have the in-your-face quality of their earlier work. It doesn’t grab you, make you listen to it, make you dance around the room and sing it in your head all day like they have in the past.
That said, I think the album has hidden depths. I think it’s an album for listening to alone in your bedroom, with the headphones on, pouring over the lyrics and finding they speak straight to your heart in a secret code between friends. It’s an intimate, interior album, almost the opposite of its title. It’s a concept album by three women who are very, very smart–maybe too smart, too smart to be fools for love at least, to fall for hot rocks–diamond rings, Rolling Stones, whatever. The way Corin and Carrie trade vocal lines, so that their sometimes different takes on subjects interweave almost indistinguishably, like this is a talk they’re having with themselves, with each other, and in your head–this is new ground women are creating through music, capturing the intense intellectual conversations girlfriends have with each other as we try to lead our lives in a post-nuclear-family age, when hearts are feared as boxes and tumors, and needed as listeners.
Bill, as a boy, can you relate? I almost don’t want you to get it; I almost don’t want boys tapping into this late-night phone line Sleater-Kinney reveal. Is that selfish of me?
