Less Riot Grrl than Riot Lladies Who Lunch: Sleater-Kinney’s Little Rope reviewed

Given that Carrie and Corin are now in their fifties and one of them has settled down with a nice man, this is perhaps less Riot Grrl than Riot Lladies Who Lunch. You cannot expect fury to sustain itself for 30 years, not least when your band has long since ceased being an upstart revolution to the patriarchal rock order and has become instead a kind of indie heartland rock institution.

This is Sleater-Kinney’s 11th take on that curiously bloodless American version of punk, a genre which is now comfortably mainstream. They never had quite the cuteness or pop sensibilities of, say, Veruca Salt: what marked them out originally was a disinclination to compromise. They sing better than they used to and have at last arrived at the notion that a decent melody here or there might help their cause.