Sleater-Kinney
It never bodes well when the first thing you see of a band is its members pointing their guitars in unison like guns. The Priscillas have clearly rehearsed a lot: their songs are polished and they make no mistakes musically. Unfortunately, the songs are just not good. Instead, there is nothing to their performance at all beyond some poppy tunes with slightly too much distortion and some embarrassing attempts at brattitude. Ultimately, though, nobody came to see The Priscillas.
The screams that greets Sleater-Kinney’s arrival attests to this. In spite of some confusion among the band members as to whether they have actually played in Oxford before, it is clear that this, one of very few shows they are playing in Europe surrounding their appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties, is one that they are going to make special. Whether it is the kind of special that the crowd is hoping for is unclear.
Playing almost all of their new album, The Woods, and hefty chunks of their previous two, there is not a lot of room for older material. There are a lot of blank looks in the audience for the bulk of the show, with several obvious singles omitted from the setlist in favour of the newer, darker songs. The impact of this, though, is that fun is turned down in favour of intensity, and Sleater-Kinney really do put on an intense show. There is no timewasting.
They play song after song like they mean it and have complete control of the audience the whole time. In the current climate with bands believing that creating a decent performance involves dressing sharply and posturing ridiculously, Sleater-Kinney show that, if you actually have good songs and know how to play them, nobody is that interested in the rest.
25th May 2006