Description
Perhaps it was inevitable that Sleater-Kinney would reunite. They parted ways in 2006 claiming that it was a hiatus, not a dissolution, thereby leaving the door open for a comeback -- a comeback that arrived nearly ten years after the group faded away. Smartly, Sleater-Kinney don't pick up the threads left hanging by the knotty, roiling The Woods. They acknowledge the decade they spent apart, a decade where all three members pursued very different paths: Corin Tucker turned toward domesticity then founded her own punk-blues band, drummer Janet Weiss played with Stephen Malkmus before re-teaming with Carrie Brownstein in Wild Flag, an indie supergroup that provided Brownstein a breather from her newfound fame as a television star. In short, all three spent ten years living their lives and those lives can be felt throughout No Cities to Love, a record that neatly balances urgency and maturation. Purposefully short -- the album weighs in at barely over a half-hour -- and conspicuously bereft of slow songs (the slow churn of the closing "Fade" is the only contender), No Cities to Love feels breathless but it also finds room to breathe.