Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #58 Sleater-Kinney – What’s Mine is Yours

Posted on | November 3, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #58

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Sleater-Kinney – What’s Mine is Yours (2005)

What’s Mine Is Yours – Sleater…

While the boys were reducing their shirt sizes from small to extra small, and when the conquest of cool suddenly became an arms race that ignored real music entirely, many of the best female rock bands were asking the world a pretty grave question: if a girl shreds on guitar harder than anyone else in rock, and there’s no boys there to hear it, does the music world at large actually care?

Consider “What’s Mine Is Yours,” off Sleater-Kinney’s last album The Woods. Carrie Brownstein had always been an skilled and innovative guitarist, Corin Tucker had always had a distinct, loud voice, and Janet Weiss had always pummeled drums very well. On “What’s Mine Is Yours,” however, Tucker-Brownstein-Weiss may have been the first female trio to approach Plant-Page-Bonham, minus the misogyny and the hobbits, but with genuine pathos, excitement, and attitude.

“What’s Mine Is Yours” wasn’t really epic, but it was the perfect reflection of how an album can take on hard rock with a feminine perspective, (and not just by females), better than anything previously. Sleater-Kinney’s “hiatus” was particularly tragic because it came when the band had just taken a new direction that everyone wanted to see more of. Of course, within the next few years, there’d be a new batch of female shredders (Marnie Stern, Screaming Females, Yellow Fever), breaking stereotypes in a subtler, but more productive manner.

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