Sit Down, Honey, Let's Kill Some Time

Well, Ideological Readers, I know that I've been quite a disappointment to you... taking too long a break over the wonderful holiday season and leaving all of you in the lurch... drooling for the rest of the Ideological Cuddle's Top 20 of the Decade. I hope that all of you enjoyed your holiday season with kith and kin (to borrow a Clark Griswold phrase), and are now enjoying the gloriously freezing winter (and all of the snow that has covered our neck of the woods). I hope that I haven't lost any of my readership as I took a little holiday... anyway, here we go, back where we left off...

NUMBER 7:
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
Hitting like a hammer on the musical landscape in 2005, The Woods would prove to be Sleater-Kinney's swan song (unfortunately). To this day, no 3 piece of this decade would serve up the rock and roll wallop that the riot grrrls in Sleater-Kinney would on this record. It was a difficult decision to pick this record over All Hands on the Bad One or even One Beat (S-K's 9-11 record). Those records may pack more of an emotional punch, but a greater sonic punch is what we're looking for on this list.
It is clear from the opener, "The Fox", that Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss are here to RAWK. The song tears into a furious guitar part and hacking back beat. The record doesn't slow down from there. The duo of "Jumpers" and "Entertain" are almost peerless in '00 alternative music - the latter, a heart-wrenching tune about suicide, the former, a scathing indictment of our media-obsessed culture and war-mongering. The centerpiece of the album is the second-last track (should have closed the album and Sleater-Kinney's career, if you ask me... and yes, by reading this blog, you did...) "Let's Call It Love". Reviewers have been quick to compare it to the work of thundering heavy-metal and rock dinosaurs such as Led Zeppelin and Cream. I feel that it is something else entirely. Maybe hanging out with Pearl Jam rubbed off on them (although this whips anything that the PJ boys put out in the past decade), or maybe they just felt that there was a dearth of heavy rock at the mid-point of the previous decade. Either way, the ladies of S-K brought it hard. "Let's Call It Love" lumbers on for 11 minutes of pure heaviness. It wouldn't have sounded out of place on a metal album (maybe even a Baroness record?) but lives comfortably on this masterpiece.
Reviewers were quick to point out the obvious - that this record was made by a group of females and rocked harder than anything else released in 2005. To minimize this achievement by breaking this work of art down to the sexes of the artists who made it is sexist in and of itself. The fact remains that music lost one of it's preeminent indie rock progenitors when S-K decided to call it quits in Summer, 2006. They toured extensively to support The Woods, as if they knew that this would be everyone's last chance to see them live. It's rare that a musical group goes out at the peak of their powers, but we're left with a beautiful recorded legacy of passion and power (and many bootleg concerts) to remind us of Sleater-Kinney's prowess for years to come.
The Woods - "Entertain"
The Woods - "Jumpers"

Ok, next in the Decade's Best is coming in a few minutes... would have put them together, but I promised separate posts for each.
Happy New Year, Love all, and Listen...