Shortly after the release of last year’s Start Together box set, Sleater-Kinney announced that they were returning after a ten year hiatus with a brand new album. The news made me ecstatic, and I don’t think the return of any other defunct rock band could make me feel quite the same way. Sleater-Kinney were a very important band to me, even though I only caught up with them a few years after they’d already broken up. A lot has been written about Sleater-Kinney’s impact on music in general, and many people have similar stories about how important their music was to shaping their taste, their personal politics, or even their identity. While I don’t have a particularly unique story about how I discovered their music or what it meant to me personally, I can say that they’ve opened my mind and rocked my face in a way few bands have. Here’s my take on their discography, including some tentative thoughts on their new album, No Cities to Love.

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I bought a copy of They Want My Soul today. Yes, you heard me a “copy” as in an actual CD. There’s not a lot of bands I’d do that for but Spoon? Spoon is special. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is my favorite album of the 2000s and one of the defining albums of my life. If anyone ever made a movie about me (starring Liam Hemsworth), Spoon would be the soundtrack. The reasons I love Spoon are simple; great songwriting, great vocals, and fearlessness.

Spoon has had their brushes with big success with songs like “I Turn My Camera On” and “The Underdog”, but neither of those songs changed how they go about writing and recording music. Spoon is poppy when they want to be and experimental when they want to be. This is a band that plays by their own rules and don’t give a shit about nuffin’ else. So many bands I liked before I became a cynical adult have either gone on to playing in ginormous stadiums or sunk into obscurity. Spoon has remained consistently good. No, not good, great. In honor of their eighth release, I’ve decided to put together a retrospective. Now open wide for a spoonful of greatness.

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I feel like I should be pretty excited about The National’s new album, considering these guys are one of my favorite bands of the last decade or so, but I can’t really say that I am.  It probably has to do with the fact that I’ve been distracted by a bunch of really good albums that’ve come out recently, as well as the fact that The National aren’t the most appropriate band for listening to in the summer, especially compared to the summer jam-packed album Daft Punk are also releasing tomorrow.  There’s also the fact that The National have made a career out of crafting albums that take a while to grow on you, so it’s probably safe to say that the brilliance of Trouble Will Find Me might not hit me until a few weeks after my first listen.  But maybe this retrospecticus will get me excited, as it should make it apparent that The National are very very good at making albums I like.

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Starting today and continuing for the next few weeks, I’ll be looking back at the entire recorded catalog of one of my favorite recording artists, David Bowie. Why? Well, because his new album comes out tomorrow and I hear it’s quite good. This project is going to take a while, so let’s get started. First up, the early years: from pop to psychedelic folk to glam rock.

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