release date: Jan. 19, 2024
format: digital (10 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,62]
producer: John Congleton
label: Loma Vista - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Hell" - 2. "Needlessly Wild" - 3. "Say It Like You Mean It" (4 / 5) (live on KEXP) - 4. "Hunt You Down" - 6. "Don’t Feel Right" - 9. "Dress Yourself"
11th studio album by American rock-duo Sleater-Kinney following Path of Wellness (Jun. 2021). The band was formed by its two current members Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, both credited vocals and guitars, but the band has formerly been an actual band of three members, which earlier and for the longest period also included drummer Janet Weiss, who left the band reduced to its founding members after the band's ninth album The Center Won't Hold (Aug. 2019). Little Rope is Sleater-Kinney's first on Loma Vista, and producer Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, Lucy Dacus, Marilyn Manson, Conor Oberst, Gossip, Phoebe Bridgers, Lana Del Rey, The Killers, Goldfrapp) secures a tight and energetic edge, which makes the album a more powerful expression than the band's previous outings.
Lyrically, it's stripped down, angry and filled with personal despair. The background is the sinister lived-tragedy when Tucker's parents were both killed in a car accident in Italy back in 2022 - a central story to the ten compositions. In that way the process of writing new material might as well have resulted in something closer to Nick Cave's Skeleton, but Little Rope is more like its opposite, full of energy and opposing sensations, and all cleverly held together by great hooks and melodies, which both reminds us of The Undertones, Breeders, and St. Vincent without the bad taste of mere copyist 'cause Sleater-Kinney is much more in their own right.
Imo, Little Rope is possibly the best album from Sleater-Kinney.
Recommended.
[ Mojo, Record Collector 4 / 5, 👉Pitchfork 7,7 / 10, Slant, Uncut 3,5 / 5 stars ]
