FFWD Weekly
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| CD Review by Mike Bell SLEATER-KINNEY • Fourth album from all-girl American trio, touted by Rolling Stone and Spin as one the best indie rock bands around. • Recorded by Roger Moutenot known for his production work with Yo La Tengo. Hard to believe anyone would choose "incessantly wretched" as a flavour of the month. Harder still to believe that anyone would actually be damaged enough by their own insecurities as to actually buy into that. But that's exactly the case with Olympia, Washington's Sleater-Kinney, one of the most embarrassingly lifeless and religiously untalented acts to ever inhabit front-and-centre in the windowfront of the indie rock shop. Sounding so much like so much but displaying such an unfathomable lack of proficiency at their instruments and an unconscionable disregard for anything remotely resembling an approachable idea, this hapless trio have garnered so much acclaim that you'd be pardoned for expecting a punchline. But, alas this really is the entire empty joke. Sleater-Kinney are The Donnas without the cute kitsch, Scrawl without Marcy Mays heart-wrenching vocal scars, and L-7 without the balls or hooks. Their fourth album -- that's fourth, meaning there have been three previous attempts to learn the lost art of songwriting -- The Hot Rock, contains 13 ridiculous nuggets of infuriating drabness that feature: elementary, go-nowhere song structures; grating tone-deaf yodel vocals; and lyrics so naively impressed with their imagined depth that you'd think they were copped from Jewel's diary. The only thing stopping The Hot Rock from achieving forgettabillity is that Sleater-Kinney, the position they hold in the eyes of many, and their contemptible efforts at rock music will offend your sense of justice so much it will haunt you for years to come. 0/5 |
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