The Center Won’t Hold, Sleater-Kinney’s ninth album, is about ambition, desire, and fear. Their alliance with St. Vincent has resulted in sleek, streamlined, capital-P Production that stands out from the unadorned directness of the rest of their catalog. But it is bold and loud in the same way we expect from Sleater-Kinney; the tight economies of their previous work are still present, just manifesting themselves differently. The lyrics, too, remain direct and immediate, yet elegant and precise. None of these are new descriptors for Sleater-Kinney. The three women who recorded this album are products of modern society, and they know the rules: Women aren’t allowed to age in public. They’re supposed to camouflage their bodies; they aren’t supposed to still want anything, whether intellectual, artistic, or carnal. All of those hungers are present on The Center Won’t Hold.
The title track opens the record, a statement of intent that segues from distorted industrial to electrical mayhem. The songs on The Center Won’t Hold are about the here and now and how Sleater-Kinney see themselves within it, so it is sad and sardonic, but not mournful. The daily conditions that torment us are described and shared, without conclusion: “Sell our rage, buy and trade/But we still cry for free every day,” sings Corin Tucker in “Can I Go On?” The quasi-robotic dirge “The Future Is Here” opens with, “I start my day on a tiny screen,” before keening: “Never have I felt so goddamned lost and alone.” It isn’t inspiring, but there is something intensely comforting in these public admissions.
The album is political the way the band’s very existence is political, with references both direct and oblique. “She stood up for us/When she testified,” from closer “Broken,” is a reference to Christine Blasey Ford. But it’s an earlier lyric that’s closer to bone: “I really can’t fall apart right now/I really can’t touch that place.” The high tension from the first note of “Bad Dance” feels like the danse macabre portrayed in the lyrics: “If the world is ending now/Then let’s dance,” Carrie Brownstein purrs, ending the hoedown with the line that best sums up the record’s pulsing undercurrent: “And if we’re all going down in flames/Then let’s scream the bloody scream/We’ve been rehearsing our whole lives.” Women who say these words share a solidarity.
There are also bonafide hits on this record, melodies that Velcro themselves to your brain. The aforementioned “The Future Is Here” bubbles seductively, na na na na na choruses and all. “Hurry on Home,” the first single, finds Brownstein channeling the vocal tone and affirmative attitude of the B-52’s’ Kate Pierson. With a silky chorus to smooth everything out, it’s a deliberately sexy foil to the opening track. “LOVE,” a breathless celebration of the band’s history—“Call the doctor, dig me out of this mess”—falls into the grand tradition of songs about being in a band, alongside the Who’s “Long Live Rock,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Travelin’ Band,” or the Ramones’ “Danny Says.” You can imagine the anarchist cheerleaders from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video chanting, “We can be young/We can be old/As long as we have/Each other to hold.”
Even if tracks like “Can I Go On” or “RUINS” don’t manifest themselves as solidly as some of the others, they’re still interesting, well-constructed, complete thoughts. The Center Won’t Hold is a Sleater-Kinney record not only because their name is on the cover, but because all of the elements you first fell in love with are still here: brutal and unyielding lyrics, Tucker’s superhuman vocals, the solar flares that emit from Brownstein’s guitar, the way Janet Weiss’ authority shapes both the beats and the space between them. Weiss’ statement that she was leaving the band came just days after this album was formally announced; her departure is unfortunate, not just because it is the end of a chapter, but because we won’t get the chance to see the musicians who recorded these songs work them out in public.
The challenge of contextualizing The Center Won’t Hold is that there isn’t much to compare it to. There are no other all-women musical groups of Sleater-Kinney’s longevity, stature, and influence. It matters that there are women in their 40s and 50s singing about the radical topic of… being women in their 40s and 50s, because they have few peers in their realm. It’s impossible to talk about this album without invoking the enormous line that ends “LOVE”: “There’s nothing more frightening and nothin’ more obscene/Than a well-worn body demanding to be seen/Fuck!” It’s no accident that Sleater-Kinney deliver this message within a song that will make you want to pogo around the living room, or that Brownstein’s bare butt adorns the cover of the first single. The personal is political, always.
Buy: Rough Trade
