Sleater-Kinney Announces New Album Path of Wellness for June 2021 Release and Shares New Song “Worry With You”

Sleater-Kinney are self-producing a new album called Path of Wellness that they announced will be released on June 11 via Mom+Pop. It’s the first album they have self-produced, and follow-up to the St. Vincent-produced 2019 album The Center Won’t Hold. They shared the lead single from the upcoming record, titled “Worry With You.”

The new song is upbeat and radio-friendly without losing the band’s identity. They still have the jagged guitar riffs, emotional vocals and catchy melodies that they’re known for, but it’s a cleaner, mellower sound in spite of its energy. It’s a song about making mistakes but finding comfort in a significant other, as the refrain goes, “If I’m gonna worry, I’m gonna worry with you.” It doesn’t just rely on the refrain, adding a more melodic chorus as well, “Let’s get lost baby/And take a wrong turn/That’s the life, that’s the life/We never ever wanna get burned.”

In an accompanying music video, a couple adjusts to living together in a three-room apartment as they each do things that annoy the other. There’s messy eating, an accidental kick during a workout routine, a lack of privacy, a messy room and loud drumming practice, but through it all there are moments of pure affection. On their TV screen, vocalist Corin Tucker makes a cameo advertising eye drops labeled “I’m ok/You’re not okay,” which the couple use at several points throughout the video.

Path of Wellness will be the band’s first album without legendary drummer Janet Weiss since 1996’s Call the Doctor. She joined in time for their classic 1997 album Dig Me Out and played with the group until their most recent album The Center Won’t Hold, in 2019. The reasons she gave for leaving were that she didn’t like the band’s “new direction” and no longer felt like “creative equal.” Weiss had an iconic drumming style that will surely be missed, but the band had Angie Boylan fill in as a touring drummer in 2019, and it’s unconfirmed at the moment whether she’s the drummer on the new record.

Path of Wellness Tracklist:

1. Path of Wellness
2. High in the Grass
3. Worry With You
4. Method
5. Shadow Town
6. Favorite Neighbor
7. Tomorrow’s Grave
8. No Knives
9. Complex Female Characters
10. Down the Line
11. Bring Mercy

Photo credit: Owen Ela