by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
As Pandagon and Matt Yglesias readers probably know, Sleater-Kinney plays there last show ever (at least for now) this evening in their adopted home town of Portland. We live in a world of superlatives, but S-K deserves all the praise being heaped upon them by rock critics both professional and amateur. Almost certainly one of the three or four great bands of the last decade.
Here are retrospectives from the Seattle Times, plus alt-weeklys The Stranger, the Seattle Weekly, and the Portland Mercury. All importantly, here's a webcast of their last DC show, and I'm sure their final Portland show will be on BitTorrent by about 3am Pacific Time. Fans may want to check out drummer Janet Weiss's side project Quasi, but sadly there just aren't that many similar bands. Le Tigre and Rainier Maria are vague approximations.
I vote Dig Me Out as my favorite album.
Update: Here's Amanda's old post dissecting an article on how the Riot Grrl wave that came alongside Sleater-Kinney (my girlfriend keeps telling me S-K isn't riot grrl, strictly speaking) opened the door for female artists that didn't fit traditional molds, like Avril, Alanis Morissete, and Gwen Stefani. Commenters also suggest The Gossip, who flat-out rock; I just didn't want this to turn into a "Nicholas recommends all the music he likes" post. And yet.
