Posts Tagged ‘ Corin Tucker ’

Corin Tucker Band – Kill My Blues (Music Review)

Kill My Blues cover

Corin Tucker Band – Kill My Blues

The Corin Tucker Band’s debut established themselves as a distinct entity from Sleater-Kinney, but unfortunately that was the best thing that could be said about it. They returned this year with Kill My Blues, which apparently tries to correct course by front-loading all the energetic songs for maximum Sleater-Kinney nostalgia. It even seems intended as an introduction for people who missed the last album, with Tucker explaining at the start that she’s been gone a while but is returned. Despite all that, the band still hasn’t found itself.

That Sleater-Kinney nostalgia is a powerful force, of course. “Neskowin” and “I Don’t Wanna Go”, especially, build up a lot of goodwill. Energetic and letting Tucker’s voice go all-out, these could practically be outtakes from her old band. They cover difficult territory, with the former about discovering herself as a teen and the latter about a loved one’s illness. They may not provide many details, but it’s easy to ignore that for a time.

The songs are consistently vague, though. It’s usually good for an album to offer one or two like “Joey” and “None Like You”, containing a personal message that the listeners will not fully follow. Those help to flesh out the band’s overall personality by giving a glimpse into the full life that they live. Maybe the problem here is that almost all of those songs are like that: These are personal messages not aimed at the listener, and if you’re not part of Tucker’s life, there just isn’t enough here to make the rest of us feel invested in it.

Worse, the few times the songs get a little more specific, they feel generic. “Blood, Bones. and Sand” is all about the feeling of having a child, but it doesn’t find anything original to say about the subject. The first track, “Groundhog Day”, asks if we’re all still trying to move society forward and admits to some guilt over dropping out of the public eye for a few years instead of continuing the fight. It’s appropriate to that song that she doesn’t find a resolution, but it still feels like another incomplete idea because the rest of the album never tries to engage in those themes at all. That first song allows basically no excuse for ignoring those fights, but then she just sings about loved ones and writes borderline-nonsense lines like “You can rent me a burro we’ll live off of churros/Let’s freak like we’re pharaohs/I’ll be your sparrow tonight”.

The band still offers a variety of styles to back up Tucker. However, the faster songs actually make the band feel a bit less varied than they were before. Their technique on those tracks is generally a fast, unvaried beat with competent indie rock riffs echoing it closely.

Corin Tucker will always be a star to some of us. Even so, her new band can’t achieve more than intermittently interesting songs. Two albums in, they haven’t figured out how to make their style work.

Grade: C

 
2012
12/27
CATEGORY
Music
Pop
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Corin Tucker Band – 1,000 Years (Music Review)

1,000 Years cover

Corin Tucker Band - 1,000 Years

Corin Tucker hasn’t been heard from much since Sleater-Kinney ended. Her long-awaited reappearance, now at the head of The Corin Tucker Band, is sure to thrill some fans and disappoint others. Sleater-Kinney’s final album, The Woods, showed that they didn’t feel beholden to anyone else’s expectations, and so it’s no surprise that the new 1,000 Years rarely sounds like Sleater-Kinney.

Tucker’s voice is still unmistakeable, of course. But she is much more restrained now, usually singing in a low-key, relaxed croon. Occasionally, she slips comfortably into her old hooky vocal catches (in “Half A World Away”) or full-throated rock mode (most notably in the refrainof “Doubt”), but she usually sounds like she expects to be singing for a quiet coffee shop than a raucous crowd.

The band, which includes both a dedicated cellist and violinist, is similarly restrained most of the time. They’re content to try out different sounds on almost every song, starting with a familiar folk-rock but rarely staying there. “Handed Love” builds a bluesy, slightly electronic riff through two quiet minutes before releasing the tension with a half-minute of energy. “1,000 Years” uses a quiet but sinister grinding bass track to give weight to the light acoustic guitar that drives the song, And “Doubt” is simply a balls-out rocker, though its abrupt stop and re-start in the middle makes it less radio-friendly than it seems.

There are a few problems, though. The quiet singing and slow, frequently hesitant music often result in things that feel more like song snippets than complete works. Tucker’s lyrics add to this, with a recurring theme of separation (whether in time or distance) and loss. The narrators grasp for something, but their satisfaction remains as stubbornly out-of-reach as the listener’s. When the lyrics do resolve to specifics, they often go too far to the other extreme. (The last verse of “Half A World Away” explains that it’s literally about a lover gone to deliver aid in Africa. After the bulk of the song is so vague, these eager specifics create an artless contrast.) Overall, Tucker makes an honest attempt at varied, personal topics, but never finds the memorable turns of phrase, revealing lyrics, or hooky sounds that make personal songs successful.

It’s also frustrating that the band can be a little more eager to go loud than Tucker is. Even when they both raise the volume, the music has a tendency to drown out the vocals. Whether this is poor production or an intentional distancing from Sleater-Kinney, it sounds unnatural and draws the attention away from one of the group’s biggest assets.

A lot of talent is evident here, both in Tucker’s solo songwriting and her band’s versatile support. The decision to release this album as “The Corin Tucker Band” rather than simply as a solo “Corin Tucker” was the right one. However, they haven’t yet figured out how to best reach the potential that they show.

Grade: C

2011
04/28
CATEGORY
Music
Pop
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