Sleater-Kinney - the End of the Road

Sleater-Kinney is breaking up. The website says it's an "indefinite hiatus," but I know a euphemism when I read it. They're done. Corin Tucker will move to widely acclaimed and occasionally misunderstood solo albums. Carrie will throw down as a guest artist on albums by Pearl Jam, the Gossip, and the Queens of the Stone Age. Janet Weiss will still play with Quasi, and some other group will have the good sense to sweep her up. She may be the only drummer strong enough to replace Matt Cameron, should he ever leave Pearl Jam.

Sleater-Kinney is breaking up. They released the most unexpected and devastating record of their career, the one that makes everything else look like an elementary school project. Then they folded up the tent. I'm left with a new sense of sadness every time I hear the blowtorch opening of "The Fox" or the vicious interplay of "Entertain." This was the last album by this band. This was the one that killed them.

I've been comforting myself with overload. I've been watching clips of them on the Henry Rollins show and live segments off the website. I'm listening to two live concerts from 2005 posted here (and my sincere gratitude goes out to the host. The cover of "Fortunate Son" is a gem, and the retooled versions of old songs are remarkable.) I've been reading their biography off the website, the birth I missed, even though I'm out in the land of evergreens and coffee. I didn't pick up on S-K until "The Hot Rock," and I didn't really hear them until "All Hands on the Bad One." And then I was hooked. I explored their catalog backwards, only recently hearing their remarkable debut album. I've only seen them once, during the AHOABO tour, playing a 1/3-full Key Arena and blowing the lid off it.

It's a week of transition here at Casa Bluesky, and it only hit me yesterday. This is the last week I'll be home with Oliver full time. Next week, Mrs. B comes home, and hopefully, I'll be working somewhere, either temping it or suddenly seizing a full-time gig. We have today and tomorrow, and then it's over. I'll talk more about this in a later posting. (I'm not ready yet.)

So what I'm doing today is project all of my emotions of loss and sadness about ending my stay-at-home tenure into my sadness about losing Sleater-Kinney. That's the only explanation for why I started getting weepy halfway through the (weird, foresty, blurry) video for "Entertain." That's gotta be it.

I saw something online that suggested that Le Tigre might be breaking up, too. If that's true, I'm just gonna fall apart.