this will be one of the top 5 albums this year. Mars Volta is in there too and if PJs comes out this year they will be. Now the next two are yet to be determined.

from Billboard:

"The Woods" makes good on details guitarist/vocalist Corin Tucker revealed to Billboard.com just prior to the band hitting the recording studio. "The songs we've written are really heavy," she said. "We want them to have an organic feel that is simplistic and yet sophisticated at the same time."

"Some of them are much longer than we've ever written before," she added. "There's actually a space jam in between two of the songs." Said jam bridges the thick rocker "Let's Call It Love" and the echo-laden closer "Night Light" with five minutes of dirty blues guitar interplay and effects pedal assaults.

Much like Fugazi's last two albums, "The Fox" finds Sleater-Kinney effectively broadening its sound without damaging the unique dynamic between Tucker, guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss.

The album opens with the sludgy, overdriven "The Fox," before offering up Hendrix-worthy guitar licks on "Wilderness," chilly, harmony-tinged verse/emphatic chorus juxtapositions on "Jumpers" and a straight-up, sunny ballad (albeit with Fridmann's arsenal of production tricks) on "Modern Girl."

Sleater-Kinney begins a short run of live dates Feb. 25 in Bellingham, Wash., followed by a show the next night in Vancouver, a March 2-3 stand at New York's Mercury Lounge and a March 16 gig as part of the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.



:drops dead from excitement:

Hello everyone.
As many of you know, our new record, The Woods, comes out on May 24th. While there is really nothing we can do to stop people from leaking/downloading promo copies of 'The Woods' on the Internet, we want to say that we don't support this action and we want to address it directly, and hopefully, preemptively.

It seems important for you to know how we feel about it.

The people we are most excited to have hear this record are our friends and you, our fans, the people who have supported us and who are eager to hear our new ideas. We feel as impatient for this new music to get out into the world as we're sure some of you do.

Our latest record is something that we have worked on for a long time. The writing took nearly two years in an effort to challenge and push ourselves. And the recording/mixing itself took six weeks. So much of this new record is a response to the deadening and watering down of music. We wanted to make something that felt wild and alive and that made us excited to wake up in the mornings. There is art work and lyrics and images that we want to share. Ideally, we want to present this record in the way we envision it; as a complete entity, flowing and tangible and within the context that we have created for it. Part of that context is the community that we come from, and this community includes you. And we have some of the best fans: you are smart and critical and outspoken, and we're proud to feel a connection with you.

We know that most people who download indie songs/albums for free find other ways of supporting the bands they love. And we acknowledge that it is a new era and that many people discover music through file sharing. We feel lucky to be a band that has grown organically over the years and we realize that technology has changed the entire process of growth and awareness of music. (We love, for instance, that bootlegs of our live shows are traded on the Internet.) It's scary to imagine that this leak might actually affect our livelihoods, but ultimately this isn't about the fear of people not supporting us financially as indie artists. We don't think of 'The Woods' as some product getting out there early, we think of it as our art and lives and dreams. For us it's about respect and about people supporting us by being aware of our artistic intent. We ask that you please respect our wishes to present this record the way we intended. We're certain that you would want the same for your own endeavors, artistic or otherwise.

So much of what this record is about sacrificing everything to feeling, it's about experience and living and being in the present tense. There will be so many things to experience between now and May 24th; so many other records to sit with and live through, as well as films, books, friends, conversations, etc.

The most honest thing we can say is that it breaks our hearts to think of this being out there early. It actually just feels awful. The release date is 3 months away. We have worked for so long on this record. It's not real for us until May 24th; that is the moment when we get to share this piece of our lives that we are so proud of, to share it with you the way we intended; please wait until then to share it with us.

If you have put this record up on the Internet, please take it down now.

Thank you,
Corin, Carrie, and Janet

has it actually leaked yet?

We ask that you please respect our wishes to present this record the way we intended.

Sleater-Kinney: "The Fox"

From the first note of "The Fox"-- no, from the half-second of feedback before the first note-- things seem to have changed for Sleater-Kinney. Fuzzed-out guitars pound out a sludgy 4/4 that sounds more like an early-90s Seattle band than a group of Pacific Northwesterners in 2005. After a few bars, the noise drops away to woozy bent notes from an unaccompanied guitar. Singer Corin Tucker sings in a restrained drawl, and when she does let loose (and this is coming from someone with a low tolerance to her unholy bleating), it's used to great effect, fighting over the maelstrom of distortion in the chorus. Drummer Janet Weiss is the secret weapon here, packing the song with relentless drum fills and wrecking-ball swagger. "The Fox" is exciting new ground for Sleater-Kinney, a swinging hard-rock track that's augmented by its infectiously bratty vocals. You can call S-K a lot of things-- earnest, inventive, uncompromising, "riot grrls"-- but before "The Fox", I'd never have called them fun. [Jason Crock]

Minor spoilage.



Sounds pretty tasty, don't it?

j.