It’s a cold, cruel world that Sleater-Kinney throws us into on this record. A world without mercy, in which the laws of a higher power apply that no one understands anymore. Where the limits of emotional resilience are exploded. “Little Rope” begins with a volcanic eruption that erases certainties. The song is called “Hell”. But there are icy realizations lurking in this hell: “Hell don’t have no future/ Hell don’t have no past/ Hell don’t have no worries,” Corin Tucker sings with blinding anger, before everything around her crumbles to dust. In this apocalyptic hymn, even the sentence “We’re gonna live at last” seems like fatalism.
“Little Rope” is an album of mental anguish and apathy
Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker have been running Sleater-Kinney as a pair since drummer Janet Weiss left in 2019. With “Path Of Wellness” they had to close the gap and were looking for a sound as a duo. A stroke of fate of dizzying proportions has now welded the two even closer together. In 2022, Brownstein’s mother and stepfather died in a car accident in Italy. And even though the majority of the new songs had already been written at the time of the tragedy, grief and despair hover over the recordings like the sword of Damocles. There is a constant threat of further tremors. Ends somewhat violently. Love is crushed. Bulldozes horror over everything that provides comfort.
“Little Rope” is an album of anguish and apathy, mercury and frozen nitrogen – and one of the US rock band’s most relentless. Producer John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Xiu Xiu), a specialist in ominously surging sound panoramas, often stretches the pieces to the point of breaking point, such as the infernal speed blues “Six Mistakes” or the punk hysteria of “Small Finds”. You have to think of the last Low records, St. Vincent’s glam rock moments and PJ Harvey’s The Hope Six Demolition Project. “Say It Like You Mean It” sounds like Arcade Fire hosted a studio session with Rosanne Cash. But the lonely peaks are the nervously pumping “Crusader” and the apocalyptic gospel “Untidy Creature”. Sleater-Kinney fight back against existential futility with courage and anger, without hiding their wounds from us.