Skip to main content
Who the hell kicks off a tour in Spokane?
I'm pretty sure bands actually from Spokane don't start their tours here, much less a band fans have been clamoring to see again for close to a decade. Yet, this is where Sleater-Kinney decided to play its first show in nine years—at a chain concert venue, in the middle of a drab downtown that seemed to have gone to sleep an hour before Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss came onstage. Even the band, which started out five hours down the road in Olympia before relocating to Portland in the early 2000s, seemed surprised to be there. "I've only ever been to the Taco Time here," Brownstein admitted, "like, when I was a kid."
Then again, for a group that's made a point of never repeating itself, opening its second chapter in such modest fashion is right in line with how it's always operated. For the members of Sleater-Kinney, this isn't a "reunion tour" as much it's the tour for No Cities to Love, the album they recorded before even announcing that they were getting back together, and you generally don't inaugurate a new record at a giant festival or with five nights at a big hall in some major city, where an adoring crowd and media coverage is guaranteed. You come to a place like Spokane, and see who shows up.
Of course, Sleater-Kinney fans would travel a lot farther than eastern Washington if asked, so there was little doubt the room (imagine a more compact Wonder Ballroom) would be full, nor what its reaction would be to seeing the three of them together onstage again. As huge a moment as it was, though, the band didn't bask in it for long. Opening with "Price Tag" and "Fangless," the bracing one-two punch that begins No Cities, the message was clear: This is not a reunion, it's a restart. But it's also the Sleater-Kinney you remember: Tucker's banshee wail can still peel paint off walls; Weiss still conjures the force of 1,000 stampeding mammoths behind the drumkit; Brownstein still high-kicks and windmills and brandishes her guitar like a medieval weapon. Her and Tucker's guitar interplay, augmented by touring member Katie Harkin, remains ferocious, growing tighter and more evolved, somehow, despite the 10-year absence. There were a few miscues, but that's another reason why it's a good idea to open in a smaller market.
While the setlist spanned the trioâs historyâfrom 1997âs Dig Me Out, its first album with Weiss, through 2005âs thunderous, overdriven would-be swan-song The Woodsâit was the newest songs that hit hardest. Itâs a testament to Sleater-Kinneyâs determination to live up to its legacy rather than lean on it that those songs were met with nearly as much enthusiasm as the classics, the choruses of âSurface Envyâ and âA New Waveâ inspiring sing-alongs as loud as those for âModern Girlâ and âWords and Guitar.â It was âNo Cities to Love,â though, that spoke most to the momentâa reminder that it ainât about where youâre from, or even where youâre at, itâs wherever the people you love are. In May, itâll be Portland. But tonight, that place was Spokane.
"It's hard not to smile," Brownstein said toward the end of the night, a rare acknowledgement that this was something more than just another gig. I'm sure the crowd would agree.
All photos by Matthew Singer.
WWeek 2015