Little Rope - Sleater-Kinney: Review
Review by Lav:
Washington punk outfit Sleater-Kinney has been around for three full decades now. The band is responsible for some classic albums I absolutely love like The Woods and Dig Me Out. After some time away the band reunited in 2014 and returned with a great comeback record in No Cities To Love. But since then I haven't been crazy about their output. While 2021's The Path Of Wellness was more forgettable than anything else its predecessor The Center Won't Hold might be the only Sleater-Kinney project I outright dislike. Following some singles I enjoyed and positive buzz towards this new album I was hoping for a second comeback of sorts from the band, which didn't exactly come to fruition.
My favorite of the singles was the third Untidy Creature, which ends the album. It's one of the only songs here that really feels like it carries the weight of Sleater-Kinney's impressive career with a hook that rushes through a soaring vocal performance and sticky refrains. The other huge highlight on the record is Six Mistakes. It's one of the loudest songs on the album and one of the most intense as a result. I love the blistering noise and intensity in all the performances which makes for a shining moment.
I also thought Say It Like You Mean It was a decent single. Even though it's a shift to something much smoother and poppier than many of the other tracks on the record I still like the refrains a lot and the cinematic little guitar licks are a nice touch. Dress Yourself starts with a more reserved demeanor than much of the rest of the record. But it progresses really nicely into something pretty compelling. Mostly the song represents the kind of dynamic progression that rarely appears on the record and many of the tracks here could really benefit from.
Tracks like Don't Feel Right and Needlessly Wild don't really develop in the ways they could have to stay interesting. There are songs that manage to be decently compelling even as they stay relatively static. Small Finds is a jammy deep cut I like even though I wish the vocals were allowed to soar a little bit more in the mix. Hunt You Down really needs a bit more to it, but I'd be lying if I said the eerie but imprecise lyrics don't get to me a bit.
Speaking of lyrics, they're surprisingly rough on this record. Opening track Hell sets kind of a bad example for the album. I had a good first impression of the song when I heard it as a single but it got less and less impressive to me the more I paid attention to its lyrics. Crusader is even worse with lyrics that are far too corny and silly for the song's otherwise serious demeanor.
While this album is a shift back into a heavier sound for Sleater-Kinney, the band isn't exactly jumping back to their heyday. It has moments of striking intensity but all too often they're undercut by a failure to craft fully formed songs. What results is an album that I have similarly little to say about as their previous record. Though flashes of their greatness exist, Little Rope isn't the new record I've been waiting for from the punk legends for nearly a decade now. 5.5/10
For more Sleater-Kinney check out my reviews of The Center Won't Hold and Path Of Wellness
