Sleater-Kinney are all grown up. Still dressed as schoolgirls on the back cover of their 1997 masterpiece Dig Me Out, they could be seen on the front of last year’s uneven Hot Rock, hailing the first cab out of town. Look at the band, standing self-possessed and defiant on the back of All Hands on the Bad One, though, and there is no question that they’re big kids now. More importantly, the songwriting here leaves you no doubt about their maturity as artists.
The Hot Rock was a transitional record. Sleater-Kinney were building a bridge from the propulsive, more primitive rock of their earlier releases. The Hot Rock caught them in the middle of the river, but they are now safely on the other shore. The songs on All Hands on the Bad One manage to meld the more complex song structures the band first explored on The Hot Rock with the energetic stylings of their earlier material. The first cut, "The Ballad of a Ladyman", makes this abundantly clear -- ear-catching handclaps mix with lyrics that could easily be the band’s latest manifesto: "I could be demure like/girls who are soft for/boys who are fearful of/getting an earful/But I gotta rock! I’d rather be a ladyman"
The number of ear-catching songs on this CD is impressive. In several weeks of listening, I’ve found my brain getting stuck on the lyrics of "Youth Decay" ("Daddy says I’ve got my mama’s mouth") and the Who-inspired guitar work of "You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun". The addition of Janet Weiss as a vocalist is an exciting new development. Her turn at the mic on "Milkshake’n’Honey", reminiscent of a sly, meandering Chrissy Hynde, becomes even more striking when, at the end, it melts into tightly harmonized backing vocals and swirling organ.
Sometimes, when bands grow up, they lose something vital and important. I remember rueing the changes evident on The Hot Rock, thinking that Sleater-Kinney would never again produce a song that left me weak in the knees the way "Turn it On" did. They may not ever again accomplish that, but with release of All Hands on the Bad One, the band makes the question itself irrelevant -- they’ve turned their sights in a new direction and proven that they can explore new ground with passion, energy and great writing.
