Sad music news today: Sleater-Kinney are calling it quits after their summer tour, which sadly has no Canadian dates. The story, on Pitchfork, rightly calls the band “America’s greatest rock band.” I couldn’t agree more.
Though the band’s style and politics evolved over the 11 years they played together — they started out steeped in the sounds of Riot Grrrl and kept evolving and changing to sound like nothing else, taking on George W. Bush and his war along the way — Sleater-Kinney will be remembered as the definitive indie rock girl band of our generation. This despite the fact in interviews the women insisted that they were just a band (not a girl band), which brought up interesting discussions of gender nonetheless, discussions that rarely surface during interviews with male musicians.
Sleater-Kinney played an important role in shaping my feminist politics, so their ending makes me very sad. So long SK, thanks for all the music and for fuelling my rockstar dreams. Sleater-Kinney listening party, anyone?
Digg
Facebook
del.icio.us
eight comments
I was just about to post this.
We got quite a few years, though.
Posted by allison
June 28, 2006, 9:54 AM
That is totally HEARTBREAKING. Especially since their last album was so promising and innovative... But I guess better to quit at the top of the crest than fizzle into obscurity, or something. Anyway. Will never forget seeing them at La Tulipe last summer, Carrie Brownstein doing Pete Townsend windmills and jumping up and down for three hours straight.
Posted by Anna
June 28, 2006, 10 AM
I thought about posting this last night but decided I couldn't do it justice without going through my personal music history.
The announcement was sad and yet not unexpected. As the years have gone by, the trio have seemed to stray from music—remember Cadallaca? The Spills? I have a bootleg of a New Year's show they played once, where Calvin Johnson and the rest of the band played an awesome version of "Rock Lobster." And then another bootleg of a twenty-minute jam they did with the late and lamented Helium.
But the last show I saw them at, they looked tired and discouraged. (The typically Toronto crowd didn't help at all.) Maybe this is for the best.
Posted by Wesley
June 28, 2006, 6:34 PM
...in fact, in light of this news, I'm going to do a little tribute to the band on my radio show on Thursday. CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal, noon-2. Expect a historical tour, some side-project detours, and some choice quotes from Punk Planet interviews. If you can't listen to it live, you can download it from the archives, found at www.ckut.ca.
Speaking of Helium, I recently saw Mary Timony play to a nearly-empty sit-down venue with rec-room-hi-fi-set-sized speakers. Am I mistaken in thinking her most recently album is totally killer? Is that scene over? Why was no one there? I don't get it.
Posted by Anna
June 28, 2006, 11:49 PM
Hey Anna can you listen to Venus online?
Posted by Nicole
June 29, 2006, 7:44 AM
Yes! Go to www.ckut.ca and stream it live from the webiste. You need realaudio or something to listen.
Posted by Anna
June 29, 2006, 9:01 AM
Thank you so much for posting about this, even if I already knew.
I'm so heartbroken, and I wish they'd played in Canada more often, because I never got a chance to see them!
A listening party would be so awesome.
Posted by Madde
June 29, 2006, 11:33 AM
I don't think anyone realized a new Mary Timony album came out last year except for you and I. And yes, it is definitely awesome.
Posted by Wesley
June 29, 2006, 6:08 PM
Leave a comment
This blog post is older than 90 days old. All comments submitted regarding this post will be automatically held for review by the editors before posting. Your comment will not appear on the site until it has been approved.
Our comment policy
Shameless prides itself on the diversity of opinions expressed by our writers, and we encourage and appreciate different points of view. Our intention at Shameless is to foster community and to maintain a safe and positive blogging environment; we do not consider it our duty to give a voice to anybody with an opinion.
Discussion on this site is moderated. We will delete comments that:
(We get to decide what's discriminatory, hateful, attacking, or inflammatory).
In some cases, we will cap off comments on a discussion when we feel they are spiralling out of control and fostering an unwelcoming space for bloggers and readers. Comments will be closed by the Web Editor, unless the post is by the Web Editor, in which case the Editor in Chief will close them.
If your comments repeatedly make the same point, they may be deleted. This also applies to comments made by multiple members of the same organization.
Your comments should be about the topic of the post, not its writer—although we certainly encourage praise for our writers, if you want to say something nice.