Let's Call It Love: Part 1: A Look at the Music of Sleater-Kinney

I’m going to talk about every single Sleater-Kinney song ever recorded. This won’t be an objective analysis. This is a labour of love for a band that feels only secondary to breathing and water in terms of importance for my existence. I cannot go a day without listening to Sleater-Kinney and while favourite bands tend to come and go in waves I think they are around for good. I’ve said that about other important artists in my life, but then that’s the thing that’s so beautiful about music in particular. It can fade as you mature and grow older, but in that moment those notes and those words mean fucking everything to you. Music is like an attachment of soul and the one art form that feels like it morphs you into the person you are and who you want to be. It can lift you up in moments of need and fix all your problems in 3 minutes or 15 if you’re into progressive rock, and it’s a kind of magic. It's a rhythmic alchemy brought to the world out of nothing by these god’s who stand on stage and produce life through sound. It’s powerful and Sleater Kinney feels like a direct reflection of everything I am. I think favourite bands always kind of feel that way. They belong to you right? When I’m listening to them they feel like something vital to my life. There’s no way I can ever repay them for the support they’ve given me so I’m just going to keep on listening for the rest of my life.

First a little background information
Sleater-Kinney would hardly ever label themselves as a riot grrrl act during their heyday (something they would discuss more openly after they went on hiatus) but their genesis is very much steeped in that sound. After all Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein are the Foremothers of riot grrrl acts like Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17 and Heartless Martin. In 1994 the first Sleater-Kinney music was released in the single You Ain’t It/Surf Song for Villa Villakula Records. They would also record two other songs for that label in Write Me Back Fucker and a cover of Boston’s More Than a Feeling. These first recordings reflect a band that already had their sound set in place. It was just rougher around the edges. 

You Ain’t It is lyrically about as forwardly-snotty-fuck you-riot grrrl as this band ever got, and it kind of rules. It’s the same kind of rock is not just for men attitude that many riot grrrl bands possessed from this same time period. What I truly love here is the wailing (I bet I’ll use this word a lot) braggadocio in Corin’s voice of not giving a fuck about boy bands. In 1994, and still to this day really, women are still seen as novelty acts in rock music. You’ll see the term “Girl rock band” get thrown around a lot as a buzzword as if it was another thing that needed to be gendered to the point where you had to separate women from men just because it was unfair to compare the two, and it’s bullshit. The riot grrrl movement in general was as much about feminism as it was about punk rock, but it certainly broke down barriers and told girls they could do anything in the world they wanted to and be better at it than men. In the sound of the song though it proved the band was already working out their formula. The guitars are already twisting and contorting around each other and Corin and Carrie are already using choruses to launch a harmonic attack in vocal and guitar. It’s awesome for reasons that don’t just align with my own punk rock feminism. It’s a hell of a start, and they’d get so much better. 

Surf Song is the b-side to You AIn’t It and it has the same roughness of all the Villa Villakula recordings, but unlike You Ain’t It’s brash riot grrrl aggression Surf Song feels absolutely light. What song wouldn’t feel light with lyrics like “Let’s go down to the beach today, Let’s go down to the water and play” ? Sleater-Kinney would rarely go for the type of sweetness that is found in this song, but it’s ultimately one of my favourites for that very reason. I searched all over the internet for this song so I could somehow have it with me at all times. I would complain to my boyfriend that I couldn’t ever find “The Sleater-Kinney Beach Song” and I’m sure I whined about it constantly, but oh the elation when I finally found it. I would download it (sorry you can’t find the Villakula recordings anywhere anyway), and have it forever. Oh! And the pen pal letter in the middle that Carrie writes to Corin where she complains about the band name and talks about new wave bands? It’s like friends in the back of a high school year book and my heart melts. The kind of friendship I’m lucky enough to have with one person. You know who you are.

The other two songs on the Villakula set are Write Me Back Fucker and MoreThan a Feeling. Write Me Back Fucker (great title btw) is maybe the least interesting song of these early recordings. The most notable thing about it is the title and the bridge, which just soars due to Corin’s voice. It’s almost kind of funny the previous song had an entire letter segment and this song is actually about a break up via letter. I don’t think they are in any way connected but I think that’s a neat fact. The first truly special moment in Sleater-Kinney’s career is their cover of More Than a Feeling . The song has that same DIY sound as the others on this label. It’s a sound I’ve grown to love in early riot grrrl recordings (especially Bikini Kill’s Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah), and followed Sleater-Kinney up through their first album the following year. There are multitudes of things I love about this song. The soft build up of the warm guitars in the verse, the harsh reimagining of the chorus with Carrie’s primal screams that she would make even better use of on Last Song the following year, and then there’s the outro where the guitars just sing and Corin wraps her voice lightly around the melody and it’s a thing of absolute beauty and cements this as the best version of this song. Sorry Boston, Sorry Nirvana.

The Optimism of Zero

Synthesizers buzz and hum as she puts on her makeup and zips up her PVC outfit. She runs her hand down her bangs and grabs her leather jacket. Her initials are on the back and she slides it on. She stands behind a curtain waiting to show herself to the world. This is her look and she's proud. She has one final unsure look on her face and then pulls the curtain back to rapturous applause and she struts down the empty street evolving into dance. The song soars in praise with her. It's her life and her self-expression and she is showing it to everyone. All she can do in response is dance while others look on. They look a little surprised by her outfit and her attitude but they see that she's happy and eventually she runs into people who smile upon seeing her.

In these four minutes The Yeah Yeah Yeah's Zero directed by Barney Clay is deeply humanistic in a completely optimistic and joyful way. In this world, self-expression equals true joy, and the only responsible way to act on joy is through dance as Karen O suggests here when she seems so happy that she dances on top of cars. We live in a cinematic world where the most prized stories are about tragedy and the films that make the most money, and therefore control the Hollywood system, are about the end of the world or general destruction with no consequences. Even in television the narratives are controlled by serial killers, cops, and bad men. The musical, screwball comedy, and romantic comedy are nearly all dead so where did good feelings go? We live in a scary enough world that we don't always need it reflected back at us on screen but our avenues for escapism are dour. Zero was made a few years ago, but I think its joyfulness is still relevant today. It's self-empowerment of expression through choice is vastly important and in a time where things like selfies are constantly criticized as being vain and narcissistic Zero presents a different idea. It's happiness within self so much so that you just have to dance, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with being happy. That's what we all want. Isn't it?

Reunion: The Veronica Mars Movie

Originally posted on Letterboxd

I feel like I should state right now that I'm a big Veronica Mars fan. However, unlike most of the fans I didn't want more. The conclusion of season 3 ends on a near perfect note for everyone involved in the series. The show solidified it's modern noir elements in a final moment between father and daughter. It was really the perfect ending. Cult Television audiences tend to be a little greedy though and everything must always continue even when something ends strongly, and there lies the problem with having a Veronica Mars movie. It's completely unnecessary and in some ways damages a really good ending to a short, but accomplished television series that already said everything it ever wanted to say. This wouldn't be an issue if the movie was fantastic, but ultimately it's a nice but forgettable experience.

Veronica Mars was always a television show that worked best in a long form narrative. It gave the show the room to breathe, develop characters and go into themes of class, gender, race, and gendered violence. The show was never great at handling stand alone cases and the problem with now having a movie is delivering a great standalone case in 100 minutes and they fail. The mystery here just isn't interesting and there's no time to work this case the way writer/director Rob Thomas is used to handling things. Saying this case is rushed would be an understatement. This brings up questions for me as to why viewers feel the need to resurrect television shows to bring them into cinemas. As much as critics these days want to make comparisons between the two filmed mediums there are differences that make translation extremely difficult. Veronica Mars is one show that just doesn't work well in the realm of cinema. Rob Thomas doesn't have an eye for visual language for one and the already mentioned issues of adapting a story that used longform narrative for it's entire lifespan can't do the same in cinema so it was obviously going to feel different. What I'm left with is feeling this is neither good cinema or television. There's fun to be had in the rhythms of the dialogue and Kristen Bell's performance but those things were always going to translate. I can't say the same for the rest.

There's also the problem of pandering which makes the entire experience feel plotted by fans. This leads to a kind of toxicity within the narrative where relationships point more towards bad fan fiction than character truths, and that's really frustrating considering the voices feel right but their decision making a little off. Every character also has to show up long enough for audiences to see everyone. It's almost clever Rob Thomas wraps all of this around the theme of high school never ending, but in reality it's more about catching up with everyone because that's what the audience wants to see, but I guess that's what you get with a crowdsourced picture. I don't want to come off like I hate this or even dislike it though, because that isn't necessarily the case. I'm a longtime Veronica Mars fan so it's nearly impossible for me to toss this aside without being happy at hearing the fucking theme song again or Kristen Bell talking circles around everyone else (what a shame it is that screwball comedies are mostly dead and she can't star in one of those). It's just not much more than a television movie, and I can't imagine non fans are going to like this or even get it.

Veronica Mars feels like you're favourite band in the world reuniting to record an album. You're obviously excited and you never thought you'd get to hear these people working together again. You turn on the album and that all familiar feeling of knowing these people comes back, and you're happy for a few moments, but then that feeling starts to slip away and you know the fire is gone. Then the album ends and you're grateful you have more new music from a band you loved, but it's just extra songs.

February 2014: Cinema

February was admittedly another slow month and I didn't even come close to hitting my normal goal of one movie a day, but luckily the films that I did end up watching proved to be almost constantly great. The only real dud this month was the Sara Michelle Gellar starring horror film, The Return, that I watched on HBO on a whim (never watch random movies on HBO, they are always bad). I finally got around to watching 2 John Waters classics after falling in love with Hairspray last year. Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble proved to be among the very best films I watched in the shortest month of the year. Female Trouble specifically is going to have me talking about eye liner for the rest of my life. I also watched Ms. 45 which proved to be the finest film I've watched so far this year, and if I don't fall into the trap of watching Antonio Cesaro swing every last man on earth into oblivion on the WWE I may have something more substantial to say about that film other than it's awesome at some point in the future. Yes, I'm still currently obsessive in my wrestling viewing, and I guess this is just going to have to be a thing I learn how to balance. Finally, I closed out the month on a string of 2013 films that all proved worth my time, the improved sequel in the Hunger Games franchse, Catching Fire, Lukas Moodysson's humanistic ode to punk rock and girlhood We are the Best, Spike Lee's unfairly maligned remake of Oldboy, the direct to video picture The Package, and Ridley Scott's modern noir The Counselor. March is young, but I'm already off to a good start after having just finished Ernst Lubitsch's The Doll. Here is to hoping I can keep that consistency and figure out how to get to 31 films, and if I don't then quality matters more than quantity right? Hope everyone else had a great February.

Best of the Month 

Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)

Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974)

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)

The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)

 High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)

Oldboy (Spike Lee, 2013)

We are the Best (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, 2013)

The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)

The Package (Jesse V. Johnson, 2013)

Best Rewatches

Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

Synecdoche New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)

Worst of the Month

The Return (Asif Kapadia, 2006)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus, 2002)- rewatch

You Want Them to Notice: Transgender Dysphoria Blues

You are my companion. Something I never wished I had to deal with. I wish you would leave me alone. I just want to exist in this world without the throbbing in the back of my head, the constant reminder that I’m never quite going to be the person I see myself as. I travel forward in my day to day life living and dying by what other people say and how they define my identity. When they get it right you ease away and disappear and for a moment I’m at peace. I’m happy. More often though you’re here with me going off like a siren every time anyone misgenders me. I crumble and I fall into defeat. I can’t find the strength within myself to correct them and you start to wash over me and fill me with depression and toxic feelings about my own self-worth. This is every single day of my life. This is my reality. I’m a transgender woman and my companion is dysphoria.

No one talks about dysphoria in mainstream media and if I had to guess the majority of the population isn’t even aware of gender dysphoria and the real problems transgender people go through in trying to deal with those feelings. It’s almost unbearable at times and to have a worldwide ignorance of something that effects my life greatly is nothing short of immensely depressing. When I first told my parents I was dysphoric constantly and needed to transition they didn’t know what the word meant. I had to explain to them trans 101 and after all that time and after I told them about all the pain I was going through they still rejected me. They told me I shouldn’t do this for religious reasons, and told me they wouldn’t support me under any circumstances because I’d be a freak, never a real woman, going to hell, etc. What I’m getting at here is that the everyday person doesn’t understand what kind of struggle transgender people go through on a day to day basis. I think a big part of this problem is a media silence on our issues and the representation we do get culminates in either A.) Being the punchline to your joke or B.)Being your murder victim. This kind of representation openly damages people like me because media can humanize or dehumanize people who are on the fringes of society, and I certainly am.

So here I am in 2014 sitting and crying watching David Letterman. It’s not because I’m laughing at some joke he told or because Drew Brees told a heartwarming story. The musical guest that night is Against Me! and their singer (Laura Jane Grace) is a transgender woman and she’s singing about an experience that actively aligns with my own. Millions of people are watching her standing up on the stage playing punk rock music and singing about dysphoria. For a moment it makes me think of a future when this is the norm. A world where transgender artists are given the same respect and audience that other groups of people are given. It’s a world where we are respected instead of feared and a world where I feel safe. I don’t live in that world, but Against Me!’s newest album Transgender Dysphoria Blues gives me the kind of hope that one day I might. The world is still so very far away from respecting us, but maybe this album is the first in a long line of moments where mainstream media gives us that respect. I cannot state just how important and empowering this album is to these ears. I’ve never heard a rock album say “In her dysphoria’s affection she still saw her mother’s son”, or “Your Tells are so Obvious, Shoulders too broad for a girl, keeps you reminded, it helps you to remember where you come from”. I hear each line echoing from the lips of Laura Jane Grace that I’m not alone in this world and that my feelings are valid and true. This isn’t an easy listen, because many of the fears that Laura had when she came out are living inside of the lyrics. She has that same doubts that I do about what she’ll look like, where her life goes now, and what this means for her family. This is not a blues album in the typical sense of playing cyclic chords on an old guitar, but it is in the sense of talking about pain. The pain of dysphoria, and it is powerful to hear something relating to my story on national television and in national print. I don’t know if Transgender Dysphoria Blues is going to be considered a classic album or if it’s even going to find it’s way on anyone’s best of the year list in December, but for this transgender woman without a voice it is just about the most important album I’ve ever heard. I cannot thank Laura Jane Grace and the rest of Against Me! enough for making me feel validated, real, and most of all female in a world that mostly denies my identity.