“We sound possessed on these songs,” Carrie Brownstein said last year, discussing Sleater-Kinney’s new album, No Cities to Love. “Willing it all – the entire weight of the band and what it means to us – back into existence.” Today, the album is finally streaming via NPR.
It’s the band’s first album in ten years and barely needs any introduction. Instead, here’s more of what Brownstein had to say about the band’s reunion: “After we stopped playing, I was more aware that we did not have clear predecessors or successors,” Brownstein told the New York Times last month. “Which is probably the thing I’m most proud of. There was really no one like this band. It’s like a language that was going extinct.” The band wanted to be sure the reunion record had “a life force to it … blood and guts in it,” she said. “I didn’t want it to feel casual, I didn’t want it to feel like a weekend expedition. The stakes had to feel high.”
It’s easy to shrug off reunion albums, but No Cities to Love doesn’t feel like one. The record sounds like a band picking up where they left off, another breath of strength from the necessary cultural force that is Sleater-Kinney. Listen to it here.
