Sleater-Kinney: No Cities To Love

Sleater-Kinney are a Washington based punk band that has a long history of being one of the last great punk bands. They had a string of great albums in the nineties and early 2000's, but after the band's last LP The Woods the trio was feeling tired and ready to move on. However, seeing as this is seemingly the age of the comeback album (Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Boards of Canada etc.) of course we would get a new Sleater-Kinney album.

I'll be honest and say that I'm not an expert on Sleater-Kinney... in fact this is my first full listen of one of their albums. But, I don't think that has had a negative impact on my view of this album because in listening to this album (and enjoying most of it) I now want to backtrack and listen to the groups "heyday" material.

All of that aside, as I stated above, I did actually find myself enjoying a fair bit of this rather short and to the point album. For one, the opener here "Price Tag" is a fantastic start, with a lot of lyrics basically showing the dangers of consumerism and how all of our mindless consumption will have a high price to pay. I also really enjoyed the title track, this track again puts out some thought provoking lyrics, this time about certain people's love of places when in actuality, those places are no different than any other.

Other strong tracks our the ironically anthemic "No Anthems" which is just so heavy and distorted,( I was catching that same heaviness when I gleaned the bands last LP) and I also really loved the track "Hey Darling" which is a statement about fame and how it can turn talent into mediocrity; plus this track has the best hook on the entire album.

Unfortunately, though this is a really solid album, there were a couple of tracks I wasn't too fond of. The two biggest culprits show up right after the rush of the opener, with the tracks "Fangless" which just seems to drag on with very little in the way of change, and the single "Surface Envy" which has a good message, but just sounds too generic to be on an album that is otherwise full of blood-pumping, angular rock music. I also wasn't a huge fan of the closer here; it just felt a little anticlimactic to me, again, because of the amount of energy the rest of the album puts forth, maybe it would have worked better as a middle track?

So, all in all I enjoyed listening to No Cities To Love, but I think this album was more effective as a gateway to the band's past work than a zenith of the trio's skill a prowess as a band.

7.8/10