The crowd for Sleater-Kinney is a sea of leather and flannel, dyed hair and blunt bangs. There’s an anticipatory bustle as people gently jostle each other on the floor at the Hollywood Palladium, weaving their way to their spots.
The stage sets the tone for the evening. The backdrop is a huge hypnotic spiral. The spiral is made out of the outline of a pair of lips that sit in the center. The lips function as eyelids for a huge eye. More unblinking eyes float hazily in the background. There are five screens in front of the backdrop – the five band members will stand in front of them. Some of the screens have hands on them. The hands look like they’re either reaching for something, like the hand coming out of the dirt at the end of “Carrie,” or like they’re trying to push their way out of something. The other screens have abstract figures – they look like sharp-toothed animal heads. We’re in for something bodily and surreal.
The band comes on. Long-time drummer Janet Weiss left Sleater-Kinney earlier this year, due to a disconnect from the other members and their new material. Stepping in for her is Angie Boylan. She, Katie Harkin, and Toko Yasuda join original members Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker onstage. They start playing as soon as they take their places.
They’re explosive.
Brownstein’s short wavy hair flies alongside her as she slices her guitar through the air. Her physicality is intense, her energy formidable – she commands the stage. Tucker’s vocals are toothy and biting, her consonants hard, her mouth open and spacious as the sound reverberates around us. Tucker’s vocals don’t care about being pretty.
When Tucker and Brownstein sing together, their voices border on screams or wails – full of power, full of anger, full of something to say.
Sleater-Kinney has always been a political group. Since their inception in the ’90s in the Pacific Northwest, they’ve been a sharp, innovative, riot grrl inspired band of outspoken feminists. That thread is present here, on a Thursday night in November, more than 20 years later.
The band barely breathes between songs. When they finally do pause, Brownstein addresses the audience: “So many of [our songs] are about despair, but ultimately so many of them are about connection and hope.” She uses this to segue into the importance of political engagement and activism, advocating for gun reform. She tells us to “show up in the ways you can for each other, for your families, for yourself – and take care of each other.”
The emotional end of the show is the third song of the encore, “Modern Girl,” off of the album The Woods. It’s one of their most popular songs. It resonates. The band and the crowd are one cathartic voice, singing, yelling together: “Anger makes me a modern girl …My whole life was like a picture of a sunny day, my whole life was like a picture of a sunny day.”
The care in the air is palpable. Concerts are sites for community, for shared values, for kinship. Disparate parts brought together, the separated and disjointed body made whole. Take care of each other.