Image: www.sleater-kinney.com
The palaver over Perth’s Elizabeth Quay slowed to a close last month when the riverside strolling spot finally opened to the public. Stuffily named — to the chagrin of republicans the city over — after our nation’s royal figurehead by Premier Colin Barnett, the large site is still fairly unadorned; in short, there’s not much to do. Thankfully, organisers at the Perth International Arts Festival have transplanted their long-running live music venue to Betty’s Jetty, and they’ve brought with it one of the greatest of all American rock bands. I can’t think of a better act to inaugurate this fusty landmark, distended with the implication of pomp and regality, than Sleater-Kinney, a group formed from the fertile traditions of punk and the early riot grrrl movement.
The all-female Olympia, Washington three-piece, comprised of two guitarist-vocalists, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, and a drummer, Janet Weiss, have a surprising history with Australia: whilst on vacation in 1994, Tucker and Brownstein recorded the band’s first album in a Melbourne garage. More than two decades later, they’ve reentered a musical landscape that’s partly of their own making, and while their gender (thankfully) isn’t the political statement it once was, it’s still an essential component of their musical identity. The unusually large number of young women in the audience, young and old, testifies to the band’s intergenerational feminist vitality.
They start with Price Tag, from 2015 comeback album No Cities To Love, their first in a decade. It’s emphatically catchy, especially considering Sleater-Kinney’s vast catalogue of rough, decorum-shirking records, but like many of their newest songs, for which they’re joined by touring member Katie Harkin, it doesn’t betray their essential principles. When Tucker hits the chorus’ high note, it’s like a drop of water hitting a burning stove; the pressure is enormous, destroying any false impression of propriety. Fear not: Sleater-Kinney have not settled down. On Fangless, Brownstein offers a contrast to Tucker’s penetrating heights — she scoops up notes from below with a gutsy, low-tenor howl as drummer Weiss (whose arms belong in the Smithsonian) drives a stake through the guitar fuzz with a loud, tenacious accuracy.
Their set at the Chevron Festival Gardens shows off a range that distances them from the basic tenets of schoolboy punk rock — sloppiness, aggression, one-note routines. Sleater-Kinney’s affront to male rock is imbued in their musical diversity, and a refined, attention-grabbing acuteness, sharper than any old band. One moment they’re bratty — on Surface Envy they chant ‘we win/we lose/only together do we break the rules!’ — the next they’re digging up their roots, wailing surf-rock hooks on Oh! On Words and Guitar, Brownstein and Tucker duel at center stage, before the latter roars through Dig Me Up and the former swaps out volume for pathos on the atypical (but perfect nonetheless) rock ballad Modern Girl, Weiss trading in sticks for a harmonica.
A quick note on Weiss, whose credentials would be impressive even if they didn’t extend beyond this band: If Brownstein and Tucker are co-dependent pistons in the well-oiled Sleater-Kinney machine, then Weiss is its engine. With a captivating ferocity, she animates the band from behind. Though Brownstein put on a rock show better than Jagger, it was Wiess who constantly drew my attention. There’s an unfussy, effortless commitment to her craft on show — she rips through the 22-song set without breaking a sweat, and it’s mesmerizing.
If there was ever a question of Sleater-Kinney’s renewed vitality, their live show answers it rather breezily. Seeing them tear through a set in the center of a Quay for sightseers named after a British monarch, a refrain by a similarly groundbreaking punk group rattled around my head: ‘God save the queen…’ you know the rest. Punk can’t really die when there are still old men making stuff for kids to throw (metaphorical) rocks at, whether it’s the patriarchy or a glorified jetty for the wrong kind of Queen.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Sleater-Kinney
Presented by the Perth International Arts Festival
Guitars and vocals: Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein
Drums and harmonica: Janet Weiss
Additional instrumentation: Katie Harkin
4 March, Adelaide — HQ Complex
5 March, Newstead — The Triffid
6 March, Sydney — Sydney Opera House
9 March, Melbourne — Croxton Park Hotel, Thornbury
10 March, Melbourne — Croxton Park Hotel, Thornbury
11 March, Melbourne — Croxton Park Hotel, Thornbury
13 March, Meredith — Golden Plains Festival
