Snoqualmie

Ladies! Why?

I've just listened to Sleater-Kinney's latest album, The Woods, and all I have to say is this:

Corin. Carrie. Janet. What the hell are you doing? This is not the kind of genius I've come to expect from you! Haven't you ever heard of the Good Things test? Take any song you're considering releasing and listen to it immediately after "Good Things". If you sneer and turn it off within thirty seconds, you need to work on it some more. If you feel that it's pretty good, then it must be a tour de force. There are no such tours here.

Whoever suggested that you bury Carrie Brownstein's voice under a soup of overproduction so that it can't be heard should be fired. Whoever suggested that good guitar playing consists of too many layers and too much distortion, and particularly too many self-indulgent noise solos, should be not only fired but also kept far away from the person who made the first suggestion. And whoever said that it didn't matter if the songs were compelling enough and polished enough -- and polished is not the same as produced -- should be blacklisted from the recording industry entirely. I'm going to choose to believe that these people were poor choices of producers and advisers and not any of the three of you, because at least based on the evidence of Call the Doctor and All Hands on the Bad One you've got much more sense than that. Please try to get it back.

For some reason my boss, a huge Sleater-Kinney fan, told me that the new album was fantastic. All I can think is that there must be a really hot picture of Janet in the liner notes, because as far as I know that's about what it takes to make Willyce take leave of her senses. Good for sales, I suppose, but still cheating.

(And yes, I'm apparently ignoring my own rule about staying off of the computer. That means I owe the internet a post about atheism and proselytizing, which I'll get to. Honest.)