Alternative music fans received an amazing announcement today by Sleater-Kinney. The Olympia, Washington based band will be releasing their new album The Center Won’t Hold under the record label Mom+Pop.
Female alt-rock guitar virtuoso Annie Clark, also known as St.Vincent, produced the album. The change in sound is apparent when listening to the first single “Hurry On Home” which dropped in May.
On June 14, the band’s single “The Future Is Here,” which is the picture manifestation of what happens when a legendary female punk band like Sleater-Kinney had an indie pop artist like St.Vincent produce them.
Clark’s influence was well received as band member Janet Weiss commented, “I think for Carrie and Corin it was liberating to explore a different sound palette. Annie (St. Vincent) has a lot of experience building her own music with keyboards and synthesizers so she could be our guide to help us make sense of this new landscape and still sound like us.”
The singer and multi-instrumentalist does not shy away from expressing her admiration for the girl group. She even did a cover of their song “Modern Girl,” from their 2005 album The Woods and posted video of her covering it on Instagram.
The trio of Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein (guitar/vocals), Corin Tucker (guitar/vocals) and Janet Weiss (drums) have been performing as a group since 1994 and The Center Won’t Hold will be their tenth full-length album.
“We’re always mixing the personal and the political but on this record, despite obviously thinking so much about politics, we were really thinking about the person — ourselves or versions of ourselves or iterations of depression or loneliness — in the middle of the chaos,” Brownstein said.
Not only have Sleater-Kinney and St.Vincent collaborated on music, but they have taken their artistic talent to the silver screen with a concert tour film. Rather than a typical mockumentary, the film is a theatrical rendition of life on the road which Brownstein and Clark share similar experiences about as they both act in the film as heightened versions of themselves.
Tour dates were announced on June 14 and the band plans to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on June 19.
The Center Won’t Hold:
- The Center Won’t Hold
- Hurry on Home
- Reach Out
- Can I Go On
- Restless
- Ruins
- LOVE
- Bad Dance
- The Future Is Here
- The Dog/The Body
- Broken
Photo Credit: Owen Ela
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