I cannot, at this particular moment, think of another band I've heard more sustained cheering for, who sounds worse when I actually click on the link.... every .... time. I think once about every 2 years I see some kind of praise for them that makes me question my stance, and every single time I listen, I feel like I'm making fun of crippled kids playing basketball. Probably SUPER NICE people, but terrible musicians, and not the kind of terrible musicians who somehow manage to make something not terrible. Just the good old fashioned "you aren't good at playing your instrument, or singing, and when you try to do those things, the sounds you make are very, very bad" kind.

Emperor has no clothes.

I am by no means an S-K cheerleader or a big, big fan.
But there are a few tunes here and there that I really do like. A lot. Just enough to keep me just interested enough to keep listening and panning for more gold, but not finding anything more than I already like.

For me personally this is never a good criticism of any band because what that means is fairly relative and really comes down more to what the musicians are aiming for.

Plenty of great records have been made by people who barely knew how to play, and plenty of terrible music has been made by people who are "masters" of playing their respective instruments.

But I don't really like Sleater-Kinney, either, so there's that. Not really a fan of their voices or their songwriting, but I would never have thought to chalk it up to playing ability.

EDIT: I will admit that the Letterman performance you posted sounds a little like a "shreds" video at times. But a lot of bands don't sound great in this setting, and I don't think it's a particularly valid litmus test for anything other than "ability to perform on TV".

Drink it's almost like you didn't read what I wrote. Like you got to that one snippet, and formulated a response, without really reading everything. I freely admit that plenty of people are "bad" musicians, and yet manage to create something pretty great.

They aren't that. They just sound clumsy, awkward, and ... unmusical.

BB King can basically not play chords.

Van Morrison appears to only sing in one key, period, so none of his songs can change chords much. He just keeps singing in one scale, and not even all of the notes in that scale, just the pentatonic.


But both have made some amazing music.

Listening to SK makes me feel like someone's playing a joke on me. Like, the responses to their music in no way fit with the music itself.

First two albums = crap
Dig Me Out = "Little Babies" is a great song. The rest is meh.
The Hot Rock = Forgettable
All Hands On The Bad One = Easily their most solid album. Finally found a blend of indie rock and alt./riot grrl with some decent songs to match
One Beat = I may have never listened to this one. Or we could also say it's forgettable.
The Woods = Now this for sure is crap. I remember reading so much hype about this, so I gave it a try, and wow is it garbage.

I don't really know what to make of this, but this is yet another band where I like the other projects they are involved with more than the actual band. I really like Wild Flag and Quasi.

This is what it comes down to for me. I often find myself intrigued by the songs, or by the arrangements, but the shrill menstrual yelping that accompanies those ideas just makes me run for the hills with my fingers in my ears.

Risking being totally obtuse, they don't make music for guys like we-who-post-here. Recent New Yorker waxes worshipful about their reunion. The absence of a lower "end" to their sound, was interesting, if not appealing. Like others, their voices ruined most of it for me. Like a lot of black metal I really like, until the idiotic constipated devil growl starts, which makes it just laughable. Voice... like salt, it can make of break a dish.

that's almost a genre unto itself

I've never minded them much and always like the odd song or two on a given album. Was talking to Dump Jack yesterday about the new album coming out and he is a Big Fan apparently which I did not previously know.

We may be talking past each other here, but I did read your caveat about "terrible musicians who somehow manage to make something not terrible". The main argument you were making (and are continuing to make) seems to be that they're bad because they're bad at playing their instruments and singing rather than the choices they make about how to sing and play. I wanted to take it in a different direction and say that it's not that they can't sound any "better", it's that this is how they want to sound, but we don't like it. I think at this point in their career they know what they're doing and are not so much limited by lack of ability as lack of imagination or questionable taste.

But I don't know, I may have written them off unfairly. I hated One Beat, but I seem to remember The Woods being OK. The one older album of theirs that I have, Dig Me Out, is alright but nothing special for me personally. Not what I'd call a highlight of '90s indie rock.

What I've heard of the new record (not that live performance, but the album itself) sounds kind of interesting, though, and the snippets of vocals I've heard don't seem so off-putting. I may give it a chance, maybe whenever I decide to finally listen to Ex Hex since they're sort of related bands.

If so, then I've done a bad job explaining myself. They're bad musicians, AND, they're producing a bad final product. Add #1 to #2, and the effect of listening to people tout them as something that should be listened to is an odd one... I feel sorry for them, even though logically I know that they neither need nor want my approval, much less my pity. I can't shake that "I'm watching the gag reel from American Idol try-outs" feeling, even though I "know" better.

This is the part I find a bit strange. I probably don't like Sleater Kinney anymore than you do. I've heard worse and worse by bands that get high praise such as Lightning Bolt or [insert name of japanese noise art rock band], but I think I probably knew within the first 7 seconds of one song by Sleater Kinney that I could safely ignore anything they did as at best not for me. I get that you can feel the need to revisit critically acclaimed artists like Radiohead, Television, Can, Captain Beefheart, Zappa to try to find what you're missing but Sleater Kinney doesn't strike me as that type of artist AT ALL.

I really like most everything from The Hot Rock on and consider All Hands On The Bad One and Dig Me Out to be damn near outstanding. Then again I issue high praise for Lightning Bolt and any number of Japanese noise acts and find albums like The War On Drugs or that God - awful Tweedy record to be completely unlistenable so the expected difference in taste emerges here as well I guess.

OH YOU'VE GOT THE DAAAAARKEST EEEEYES!!

Not surprisingly, I dig them. Really like Dig Me Out and All Hands On The Bad One. Early on Corin Tucker didn't have the shrill vibrato thing under control yet. I think she got better with it over time but I can see how some couldn't get past it. Never really bothered me.

I couldn't disagree more with the argument they couldn't play. The played what needed to be played for the song they were writing.

I never picked up on the riot grrl beginnings or the feminism in the lyrics. I just thought they were a great garage band.

It was until I saw The Punk Singer about Kathleen Hanna that I looked at them more politically.

One thing that cemented their place in my own rock lore, I was in New York in February, 2003 with my then girlfriend for a 4 day weekend trip. We had tickets to see them (headliner) at the Roseland Ballroom with Blonde Redhead and The Black Keys. Unbeknowst to us, this weekend was the NYC protest march against the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Like, we literally exited a Subway and were in the middle of a few hundred thousand marchers in the street. Later that night, as the bands took the stage, they all talked about it and had been there for it. Sleater Kinney finally took the stage and put on a great show but for their last song, dedicated to George W. Bush, they played a blistering version of "Fortunate Son" to a frenzied crowd. I'll never forget it.

I remember hearing people rave about them and before I'd heard any of the records decided on the good buzz to go check 'em out live and was extremely underwhelmed after being fully ready to love them. I didn't think they were necessarily bad as I love plenty of rudimentary at best musicians, just not my thing. It just kept sounding like they just about had something really good going and then it would disappear all too quickly into another half a thing instead of locking into anything. I like their politics way more than their music if I'm honest. Also every Kathleen hannah band is miles more to my liking. I do like Wild Flag though.

Did you write "Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)" about that weekend, Ben? (Or should I call you "Bright Eyes Burgess"?)

I also enjoy wild flag but have had trouble getting into anything by SK, which is weird because doesn't Wild flag contain 2/3rds of SK?

maybe it's the lack of a bass player.

Corin Tucker's voice sounds like a terrible mix between Nancy Wilson and Geddy Lee.

I don't know what's weirder: That almost no one here seems to like Sleater-Kinney, or that the people who do are listing All Hands on the Bad One as one of their favorites.

I think they are quite good, but I also think they are a band whose social/cultural impact is probably greater than the actual music. They are strong women who never really tried to be cutesy or sexy in a Rock'n Roll world where there is still depressingly little of that.

The new album is good.

I am pro S-K. I get why many people dislike them, Corin Tucker's voice primary culprit.

Spin ranked all 109 S-K songs. Do they have nothing better to do over there?
http://www.spin.com/articles/every-slea ... s-to-love/

I've literally been on Sleater-Kinney since I turned 16 as they're named after a street in my hometown. I've always been a fan. They had a small but fervent fanbase in Olympia early on and that has gradually expanded.

I can understand some of the dislike and I'll admit that as my tastes have evolved over the years I don't go back to them all that often but I still appreciate their music. I haven't heard the new album yet but I'm going to see them live in a few weeks. I suspect they still put on a great show. TESC Geoducks omnia extares.

isn't it named after an exit, or is that collectively the name of the road.

Sleater-Kinney Rd. S.