Sleater-Kinney - One Beat LP vinyl record

Brand new, still sealed.

From the opening, off-kilter drum pattern of the title track, One Beat takes you on a log flume ride through a forest of monumental riffs-- a log flume ride, people! Witness the fretboard slides of ''Hollywood Ending'', the cocky strut of ''Step Aside'', the mighty, fist-pumping second half of Combat Rock (to which I'd like to just give a premature Forkie for Best Riff of the Year right now). Also, be forewarned that the drumstick-twirling coda of Far Away has been shown to provoke sudden miming of snare hits and windmill strums in laboratory animals. Now, you might be hearing a lot of crazytalk from longtime S-K supporters that the new album is their most disappointing to date. Ignore it; fanbase discomfort is a common symptom of the breakthrough album, proving that the act has tweaked their formula far enough to PO the vets who want their pet band to stay predictable. Kinney's definitely changed up the recipe (as they had already begun to do with All Hands on the Bad One), but all changes are positive, foremost being a new understanding of how restraint and scaling back can allow for exponentially increased rockage. ''Combat Rock'' and ''The Remainder'' stutter along a single riff, teasingly refusing to explode before building to a tantric peak. ''Light Rail Coyote'' and ''O2'' both come out with all engines blazing, but retreat to valleys of uncharacteristically subdued hush.

Track Listings