Album du jour #2 - One Beat, Three Crushes

Sleater-Kinney's One Beat

Prior Relationship to Album: Eager anticipation. I'm a late comer to Sleater-Kinney, having only started listening to The Woods late last year. I perdictably fell in love with it, since not only does it represent those rock tendancies I enjoy, but is a female only group. And I will prefer almost anything with female lyrics over male ones...(is that strange? Hmm...) But this is my first listen through One Beat - I've been getting a TON of new music lately (What I haven't been doing lately: catching up on schoolwork).

High Point: Hard to choose, but I have to go with track 07, "Combat Rock" (I thought the title track was a lock until I got to that one). Amazing hook, even better progression, and wonderful lyrics mockingly painting Uncle Sam as a dirty rapist. How often is it that the best song on a rock album is also the longest?

Low Point: The fact that they're finished as a group, more than anything else. But if I have to choose something from this album, I'll go with "Step Aside", #06. I hate to pick the one with the trumpets, because I like what they're doing there...but overall it just didn't work for me as well as the rest of the tracks.

What I Learned/Realized: Sleater-Kinney's last performance was at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, a building that means a lot to me. It is a place I've seen many concerts, including Elliot Smith's final Portland show...and also a place where I've taken ballroom dance lessons. Also, I am in love with Sleater-Kinney.

Future Relationship to Album: I need to listen to it like a hundred times more to match my plays of The Woods, because I can't tell at this point which album I like more. As JP just pointed out to me, Woods speaks much more to my roots in classic rock, and I don't think this can match its high points...but One Beat might have a higher overall quality due to the number of consistently good tracks. Time will tell.

Bonus pretentiousness du jour: Before I start handing my friends the link to this (I wanted there to be a tiny bit of content first), I should explain the name. I wanted to pick something short and sweet...otherwise, of course, I would have gone with "Brianisthegrandpoobahoffunk,andwillbereadinthe philosophycanonformillenia.blogspot.com".

My original choice was "bemused", which they said was taken (but doesn't appear to exist). I like this one better, though.. The word plays that I intended at the time:
-musings on being
-the act of being mused, turning it into a verb of ambiguous direction
-linking be-mused to a-mused
-being used
I'll be sure to retrospectively go back and claim I "intended" any other plays on my title that I can think up.

Bonus link du jour: Courtesy of JP. Click on that if you have an affinity for loud flash games, flying toasters, and rainbows, and would like to see the three joined together.