The Center Won't Hold

There's a lot of assumptions about what three women, when they get to a certain age, what they sound like, you know?” Carrie Brownstein says. “The sound of this record is a sound that I'm pretty sure no women our age have made before.” After over 25 years of making music together, Sleater-Kinney find new ways to keep doing what their music’s always done with reckless finesse: challenge and disrupt. Reflective of a time when our system’s flaws bubble to the surface more with each passing day, Sleater-Kinney’s ninth studio album The Center Won’t Hold eagerly busts open the surface and exposes the cracks, with a lyrical brilliance and sonic language that effortlessly morphs between brazen, chilling fervor and soft, urgent despair. Boasting Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent) first full-length production credit, it shocks, unapologetically taking up space in far more ways than one, and most unexpectedly, it gleams.