Few bands have maintained a consistency in their values like Sleater-Kinney have during their 30-year career. Forming during the Riot Grrrl movement, their music has always stood as a testament to feminism and proudly backs anti-establishment movements. Like the time they sang “will there always be concerts where women are raped?”’ on 2000’s ‘#1 Must Have’. Or on ‘Cambot Rock’ when they raged against the patriarchy: “since when is scepticism un-American? Dissent’s not treason but they talk like it’s the same”. Sleater-Kinney are a band whose music, political status and ethos have remained consistent from the beginning.
Returning three years after their psych-rock lockdown project ‘Path of Wellness’, their 11th album ‘Little Rope’ is a record symbolic of pain, suffering and growth. It’s no surprise they’re reflecting on change and grief – it’s where ‘Little Rope’ dwells. In 2019 former drummer, Janet Weiss, left the band and was later replaced by Angie Boylan. Three years later, Brownstein received the catastrophic news of the passing of her mother and stepfather in a car accident. Ominous lyrics are spread throughout the album and linger like a dense fog. On ‘Hunt You Down’ they sing that “sorrow hides outside the door disguised as luck”; on ‘Small Finds’, meanwhile, “there’s a bone in my garden. Look what I’m digging up”.
Throughout the album, the duo document an honest journey from pain and loss into some kind of healing. Each intricately-placed chord, bass pluck and vocal tremor are intentional arrangements conveying the band’s desperation to convert their despair into something empowering. Take ‘Dress Yourself’, which is coated in lyrics that serve as gentle reminders to stand tall in the face of adversity.
Elsewhere, album standouts ‘Hunt You Down’ and ‘Say It Like You Mean It’, are sonically commanding, the latter presenting itself as a shoegaze ballad with honest storytelling and spellbinding riffs. Working with Grammy Award-winning producer John Congleton (Blondie, Phoebe Bridgers) for the first time, their sound is vibrant in a way that lyrics often are not.
‘Little Rope’, then, is liberating in new ways for a band that have always spoken up when called upon. It emboldens its listener to feel power in confronting the uncomfortable feelings, and encourages them to absorb every emotion along the journey. It is a shining glimmer of hope in a room full of sorrow, and another string to their ever-growing bow.
