What’s So Tasty About Sleater-Kinney’s Latest Choruses?
Hello, my name is Alice and I’m a guest to planet Sleater-Kinney. Some of you, like me, are also just passing through. Others have lived here a long time and are highly learned in its history and context. I must admit to not possessing much of this knowledge, but I do know about music theory and I do have synesthesia, which makes me experience music in a cross-sensory way. I have listened to your planet’s latest release, The Centre Won’t Hold, and would like to offer some reflections about what I heard. From my spaceship to yours, I do hope you enjoy my thoughts.
In listening to The Centre Won’t Hold I’m struck by the overall consonance of the harmony. I hear chords used in ways I generally expect them to be. If these chord progressions are bread and butter (and the vocals are a generous lathering of Vegemite) why is there something so different about this sandwich? What is this seasoning? It’s like honesty is salt and irony is pepper, and the two have been meticulously sprinkled throughout. Nowhere is this more evident, in my opinion, than in the choruses.
The chorus of Can I Go On marries desolate lyrical sentiments “baby I’m not sure I want to go on” with perky optimistic harmony. The use of a classic perfect cadence lets us teeter on the edge of being “not sure” with a progression from chord ii to chord V. Then for “I wanna go on” the extremely-sure arrival at chord I and subsequent bathing in the consonance of chord IV sounds just mismatched enough with the lyrics to perfectly articulate their layers of meaning.
Similarly, in Hurry On Home, the chorus begins as the lead guitar sinks a major third with a weary smile, taking us to chord VI. Chord VI is a typically optimistic and hopeful chord in a minor key. It sprinkles the lyric “disconnect me from my bones” with a detached, escapist bliss, leaving a bitter taste.
To go a little deeper, let’s look at the isolation anthem The Future Is Here. This song is in E Flat Minor and its chorus is built around four chords. Have a listen to it here. To underscore the lyrics “I need you more than I ever have”, we begin on chord i, Eb Minor, setting up a standard down-hearted vibe and jump to chord III, Gb Major. Ok fine, this all works nicely. However as we hear “because the future’s here”, the third chord that detonates on the word “future” is disorienting and far outside our previous harmonic vocabulary for the song. And finally chord VII, Db Major, brings us back to safety and a melancholic inevitability. In hearing “and we can’t go back” we are ironically readied for the chorus to repeat.
I’d like to draw your ear’s attention now to that high, honeyed synth, a two-bar descent that’s repeated.
For something so pure and sweet, it’s amazing what power it has over the harmony when added as a layer. The second chord is given a pang of sorrow with the added major 7 and sus 2. But the third chord is even more profoundly affected.
I could write the rest of the article about this chord but for now, let’s look at the fact that it contains all the notes that the first chord does: Eb, Gb and Bb, but the inversion is different. The Bb in the bass creates a i6/4 chord that has historically been the captain of tension in western classical music. In Mozart’s day, we would expect this chord to be followed by chord V7 (Bb Major, of which the dominant 7th note is Ab). So it’s very strange for Sleater-Kinney to take this Ab note and give it premature prominence (see vocals) in their disorienting, futuristic version of a i6/4 chord. All the more so with the sung blue note on the downbeat of the bar. As a whole, this sonority gives us the impression of the future really being here, and of us not being quite ready.
The harmonic choices in The Future Is Here are much more subtle than first meets the ear, as they are throughout The Centre Won’t Hold. To me, harmony and its usage, especially in this album’s choruses, is the seasoning that defines its lingering taste. Each of the chords, and the order they’re used in, is consciously chosen and designed to either caress the lyrics or rub them up the wrong way. There are layers of colour, emotion, and flavour that take several listens to sink in — and several days to shake off.
