Premature Evaluation: Sleater-Kinney Path Of Wellness

[DudeAsInCool]

It can’t be a coincidence that the drums are the first thing we hear. Path Of Wellness, Sleater-Kinney’s new album, opens with some busy push-pull riffage and with percussion falling all over itself. We hear clings and clangs and shakers and glass bottles. We hear a big, funky polyrhythmic stew — the type of drums that Janet Weiss would never play. Weiss isn’t that type of drummer. She’s great, and she’s never ostentatious. She stays in the pocket, letting everything else in the song explode around her while holding the center. For their first album since Weiss left the band, Sleater-Kinney kick things off by letting the drums go wild. It’s so hard not to read so much into that decision.

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