Sleater Kinney- Dig Me Out

I would never call myself a punk fan. I liked Nevermind the Bollocks fine. I could tolerate the Ramones’ albums pretty well. But in general, I like individual punk songs rather than whole albums. Over the course of an album, that kind of energy just gets monotonous. Punk can be pretty boring to the uninitiated, which I certainly am. You have to be especially good to keep my attention, and unfortunately I didn’t find Sleater Kinney good. I found certain aspects of their music actively annoying.

The main annoyance was the lead singer’s (I think it was Carrie Brownstein, but I can’t be sure) voice. Now her voice might be a great example of some kind of punk aesthetic, but to me it sounded like a bleating goat. She was certainly assertive and confident, so there’s that. But I couldn’t understand what she was saying, so all I could go on was from the way she said it. Sometimes that’s enough, but here it wasn’t.

Maybe I should have looked at the lyrics. I usually do, but I kept thinking “If the lyrics were important, they’d be understandable.” I have no idea where I got this principle, and I’d actually like to modify it a bit, but at the time I was listening to the album it seemed right. As I say, I’d change it in retrospect to “The song needs to invite investigation of the lyrics if they are important.” That “invitation” does come from whether or not you can understand the lyrics, but also whether or not the song makes you interested enough to investigate. In this case, I got the message of the song, that the singer was in some kind of distress and anger, and that was all I really needed. No further investigating need be done. Other songs will tempt you with ambiguity, maybe the odd strange phrase that just makes you want to look up the lyrics. Not so much here.

Not that lyrics are everything either. I keep thinking of the Ramones. I liked their albums, mostly because the music was hypnotically repetitive. The lyrics weren’t particularly important, though memorable in some cases (“Beat on the brat/ beat on the brat/ beat on the brat with a baseball bat”). Comparing this album to one of those, I see the problem as being one of not being repetitive enough, at least not enough to be hypnotic. Every song is distinct enough to make the whole album uninteresting, that is, every song is repetitive, but each one in its own way. It’s the perfect balance for an uninteresting album.

1/5 Check out “Words and Guitar” if you really want to, but I’d say you can skip this. Especially if you don’t like punk music. If you do, I’ll bet there’s better stuff out there.