Killing Sleater-Kinney

While I was out in San Francisco, I noticed that it appears to be Sleater-Kinney week in La-La Land, North. The SF Guardian (a free weekly alternative for white people) had something like FIVE stories on the trio. Here's Seattle Times take on the record (by the way, if they really shunted their old sound, why are they touring with oldstyle S-K imitators like Timony?). The album is currently in my in-cue - I liked the free MP3 that Sub Pop put up last month and I'm an oldtime S-K hater...:

Sub Pop producer pushes Northwest's Sleater-Kinney to rise again

By Tom Scanlon

Seattle Times staff reporter

Sleater-Kinney is dead.

Prime suspect: Dave Fridmann.

Using an illustrious portfolio (Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips, the recent Low album), Fridmann lured the indie-superstar trio into the woods outside Buffalo, N.Y. There, with Sub Pop Records bankrolling the operation, he sonically slaughtered Sleater-Kinney.

Rather than a cold-blooded murder, this was an assisted suicide, as S-K was more than ready to kill off its past. It was probably a wise decision: While the politically-socially charged lyrics remained crucial to its devoted audience, after six albums, Sleater-Kinney's raggedly atonal, minimalist production style probably had gone as far as it could.

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