I saw Sleater-Kinney last night. It was okay, I guess. I wasn’t feeling very well during the show, so it impaired my ability to enjoy myself too much. They played about 10-12 new songs from the upcoming One Beat LP, and I really liked most of them, they left a very good first impression on me. I’m not sure how to describe the new tunes other than that they all rock a lot harder than anything on the last two albums, Carrie sings more often than usual, and that I enjoyed them more than most of the oldies that were played. I wasn’t very satisfied with the predictable older selections, I’m getting frustrated with them always preferring to play the more obvious songs instead of the more complicated or subtle songs. For example, I’d rather hear “Burn Don’t Freeze” or “Ballad of a Ladyman” than “The End of You”, “Little Mouth”, or “Dig Me Out”, which all strike me as a bit stale by now. I wonder if it’s just because I’ve seen S-K a number of times, that if I hadn’t seen them before I wouldn’t care all that much about this. I did really enjoy “One More Hour”, “Little Babies”, “Rock N Roll Fun” and “Call The Doctor”, even though I’ve seen them before several times, so maybe it’s just that I’m picking favorites here.

Other than the new songs, this is the order that the older songs were played chronologically. They were broken up into bits between new songs, except the last four which were the encore. Call The Doctor/ One More Hour/ Start Together/ Turn It On/ You’re No Rock and Roll Fun/ The End of You/ Little Mouth/ Little Babies/ I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone/ Dig Me Out.

I’m really looking foward to the new LP now, there’s no question that it’s going to be great. But not as great as this or this. (Thanks Tom!)