Sleater-Kinney:"The Hot Rock" (1999)

Expectations for Sleater-Kinney's fourth album were stratospheric, with the raging, tuneful feminist catharsis of Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out having garnered near-universal critical raves and outlandish media hype. Afraid of falling into a predictable rut, though, the band bravely pushed its range of expression into more personal, subdued, and cerebral territory on The Hot Rock. That means the record isn't quite as immediately satisfying as its two brilliant predecessors, but it does reward those willing to spend time absorbing its nervy introspection and moodiness. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein push relentlessly for more complex interplay, both in their vocal and instrumental work; even the gentlest songs might break into unexpected dissonance or take an angular, off-kilter melodic direction. As such, there's never an obvious, gut-level anthem that jumps out at the listener in the manner of an "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" or "Words and Guitar," but the intensity simmering under the surface does bubble over often, thanks to the group's greater use of dynamic shifts. There are fewer protest songs this time around, as most of the lyrics explore failed relationships and personal uncertainty, yet it manages to retain the sense of empowering catharsis that makes the group so compelling. The Hot Rock can invite comparisons to a less jam-oriented Television or a minimalist version of indie compatriots Helium (not to mention the obvious Kim Gordon homage on "Get Up"), but in the end, it stands on its own as Sleater-Kinney's most progressive and experimental work, as well as their darkest.

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CULT RECORD: MOTORHEAD: "ACE OF SPADES" (1980)

Igor Stravinsky once remarked that the baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi didn't write 685 concertos, he wrote one concerto 685 times. It could be similarly argued that every hemi-semi-demiquaver recorded by Motorhead in its 20 years of existance is a minor variation on the group's triple-speed signature song "Motorhead," written by Lemmy Kilmister shortly before he was booted from English prog-bores Hawkwind in 1975: distorted bass amped up to the point of insanity, Kilmister's throat-cancer roar, drug-marathon imagery, incomprehensible soccer choruses, and thrashy, trebly, speed-freak guitar crusted over the top like a ripe scab.
Motorhead's formula is pretty much everything you could want in an unfashionable rock band, even if you discount the grinning mechanized skulls, biker paraphernalia, and profoundly unwashed appearance. It seems like an obvious move in retrospect, but Killmister may have been the first Brit to plunder the Detroit Iggy/Nuge/MC5 thing the way Beatles took over Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Motorhead was the loud, wet fart punctuating the Mentos commercial of late-'70s British rock, and Motorhead-influenced groups from Discharge to Metallica dominate loud working-class music to this day; as a teenager, a pre-Metallica Lars Ulrich was president of a Motorhead fan club.
1980saw Ace of Spades, probably Motorhead's greatest studio album, with Kilmister's bad-neighbor policy rendered as crunch and spit and blood; tune for tune it's almost the evil twin of AC/DC's Back in Black, released the same year. Busy Motorhead also found time for a classic collaboration with Girlschool, the St Valentine's Day Massacre EP, an inspiration for the grrrl-rock bands of the '90s.

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