MUSIC
A New Thrust from Sleater-Kinney
“Center Won’t Hold” is Janet Weiss’ exit, St. Vincent’s arrival
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Twenty-fi ve years into their existence,
Sleater-Kinney have already broken
up and re-formed once. Their drummer
Janet Weiss announced she
would leave the group shortly after their latest
album, “The Center Won’t Hold,” received
a release date, saying she was unhappy with
its direction. They’re the most popular group to
emerge from the ‘90s riot grrrl scene, reaching
a wider audience than feminist punk bands like
Bratmobile or Huggy Bear while sharing their
politics.
Their sound has been defi ned by the interplay
of their two singer/ guitarists, Corin Tucker and
Carrie Brownstein, and the complex drumming
of Weiss, who joined in 1996. “The Center Won’t
Hold” makes a big change toward a more poporiented
direction. Synthesizers are all over the
album. Queer singer/ songwriter St. Vincent
produced the album, and it refl ects the direction
she’s pursued in her own recent music.
This isn’t the fi rst time Sleater-Kinney looked
to a producer for new blood: Dave Fridmann,
FILM
The Fire This Time
An outsider’s close-up of Southern black self-determination
BY STEVE ERICKSON
The title of Roberto Minervini’s “What
You Gonna Do When the World’s On
Fire?” applies to every American. Indeed,
everyone alive today could ask
themselves the same as climate change threatens
to make the planet uninhabitable. But
Minervini zooms in on a small, specifi c African
American community in Louisiana and
Mississippi. Although born in Italy, he moved to
Houston and has become a regional fi lmmaker,
chronicling the American South. His last two
fi lms depicted conservative American cultures
to which he had access because he’s related to
the subjects. His last fi lm, “The Other Side,”
split into two parts: one focusing on a rightwing
militia and the other on a heroin addict
living a precarious existence on parole.
Minervini found an uneasy distance in depicting
these men. The militia leader in “The
Other Side” is a veteran whose experiences
fi ghting America’s forever wars in the Middle
East brought him to some cogent conclusions
SLEATER-KINNEY.COM
Sleater-Kinney’s latest album, “The Center Won’t Hold,” bears the
clear imprint of St. Vincent’s role as producer.
who worked with them on “The Woods,” the
fi nal album by their fi rst incarnation, pushed
the group toward the hard rock of Blue Cheer
and Led Zeppelin.
KIMSTIM
Judy Hill in Roberto Minervini’s “What You Gonna Do When the
World’s On Fire?,” which opens August 16 at Film at Lincoln Center.
about them. Then, in the next breath he would
spout off nonsense like, “Obama will let the
UN invade to take all our guns away.” Mark
Kelley allowed Minervini to fi lm him and his
partner Lisa Allen shooting heroin and having
sex. If these acts were real and something they
However, “The Woods” was still fairly raw
guitar-based rock. “The Center Won’t Hold” is
the biggest departure of Sleater-Kinney’s career.
“Restless” uses strings. The fi nal song is a
piano-based ballad inspired by Rihanna. Weiss
might be unhappy because she’s clearly playing
along programmed beats in several places.
Laura Snapes’ profi le of the band in The Guardian
reveals a lot about the tension that occurred
during its recording. It doesn’t just sound like
a St. Vincent production; while it’s less slick
than her recent music, it feels like a full-fl edged
melding of the minds.
The title track is a departure for the band
that still remains fairly adventurous. It throws
together a metallic clang, dissonant synthesizers,
feedback, and vocal harmonies singing
“the center won’t hold.” Two thirds of the way
through, guitars fi nally kick in and it sounds
like a more typical Sleater-Kinney song. Its
placement as the album’s opener suggests the
band’s feeling their music had to change. It’s
followed by “Hurry On Home,” the fi rst Sleater-
➤ SLEATER-KINNEY, continued on p.33
would’ve done anyway, is it accurate to say that
there’s a degree of fi ction in the fi lm if they were
staged for it?
“What You Gonna Do When the World’s On
Fire?” takes Minervini to a further remove
from his subjects. His essay for Cinema Scope
magazine about Trumpist cinema shows that
he didn’t sympathize with the politics of the militia
and Mark (who has a fondness for calling
Obama racial slurs). His latest fi lm turns its attention
to people targeted by the hatred of the
subjects of “The Other Side.” Is there a political
dimension to his switch to black-and-white cinematography?
Paradoxically, “”What You Gonna Do When
the World’s On Fire?” is beautifully photographed,
with lush images that could go up on a
gallery wall as stills, while depicting a community
ravaged by racism, poverty, and violence.
However much Minervini sympathizes with the
politics of the New Black Panther Party for Self-
Defense (which this fi lm depicts in several pro-
➤ WHAT YOU GONNA DO, continued on p.33
August 15 - August 28, 2 32 019 | GayCityNews.com
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