Photo: Press
“We’re happy to be here. We’re happy to be a band again,” announces Corin Tucker, as Carrie Brownstein picks herself up from the floor on which she has been majestically writhing. At this, Sleater-Kinney’s first full UK gig in 10 years, the feeling is very much mutual.
Much of this Roundhouse crowd are slightly too young to have really participated in the band’s first incarnation – which came to an end in 2006 - but as we’re lulled into a false calm by the ambient spa music that precedes the band’s arrival, there’s a strange sense of collective nostalgia for a time and place that was never quite ours to begin with. Perhaps it’s because there’s something inherently inclusive about Sleater-Kinney, who perform with few of the affectations of many rock bands while still relaying an intoxicating mix of chemistry and charisma.
There’s only so much room for nostalgia though – much of the band’s setlist comprises songs from their new album, No Cities To Love. It was never an option, they say, to reunite and tour without new material. Tonight, witnessing the fervour with which they perform the likes of ‘A New Wave’ and ‘Bury Our Friends’, it becomes immediately obvious why.
Watch Sleater-Kinney perform 'Bury Our Friends' at the Roundhouse below
Behind them drapes a sort of rippling snakeskin, which comes fluttering to life during the most electric moments, as if even the walls have been swept up by the band’s energy. Brownstein and Tucker too seem to become sporadically possessed, pointing their guitars like machine guns, falling to the floor, swinging their arms dramatically with each guitar strum.
Their vocals, though, which weave under and over each other with an effortless intuition, are their most forceful weapon. Such is the precise power of Tucker and Brownstein’s singing that, on the few occasions in which they address the crowd, it’s jarring to be reminded how softly-spoken they both are.
All of this showmanship and theatricality is held together by the superglue that is Janet Weiss’s drumming. It’s both meticulously exact and expressive, and each beat cuts like a scalpel underneath Tucker and Brownstein’s chaotic guitar playing. Deliberately chaotic that is – the sort of chaos that is actually, after decades of practice, secretly measured and precise.
In an interview ahead of this show, Carrie Brownstein said, “You assume, cyclically, that there will be somebody that comes and takes your place. That never happened.” Perhaps this explains the collective feeling that, whether you’ve been a fan of Sleater-Kinney since 1995 or discovered them last Tuesday, we’ve been waiting for a show like this for a very long time.
Sleater Kinney played:
Price Tag
Oh!
Fangless
The End of You
What's Mine Is Yours
One Beat
Bury Our Friends
Surface Envy
Get Up
No Cities to Love
Rollercoaster
Turn It On
No Anthems
A New Wave
Words and Guitar
Sympathy
Entertain
Jumpers
Gimme Love
Youth Decay
Let's Call It Love
Modern Girl
Dig Me Out
