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BEST OF 2015

MAGNET’s #12 Album Of 2015: Sleater-Kinney’s “No Cities To Love”

SleaterKinney

Sleater-Kinney did everything right with its comeback album, the trio’s first since 2005’s The Woods. Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss didn’t let anyone know they were working together, much less that they were recording. They woodshedded in Brownstein’s basement until they felt that they had something worthy of furthering— not repeating—their legacy, and they emerged with a loud beast of a record, one of the best of its storied career. It’s as heavy as The Woods, as charged as One Beat, and as catchy—at least at times—as Dig Me Out. But it sounds like none of them. And it was totally unexpected, which made it all the more thrilling. The trio had their own legacy to compete with—recently entombed with the Start Together boxed set, which contained a teaser of the new music—and they came out victorious: it’s a rare and beautiful thing to see a favorite band reunite and reignite, as if without pause. Although the backstory to No Cities is great, what counts is the current one: a fantastic album that grapples with rock ‘n’ roll, consumerism and desire; that pushes forward; that rocks hard. —Steve Klinge