Wild Flag

So I think you can tell I'm not a kid when you look at the records in my record collection. But I really do try to keep up, but I just keep up with what I'm interested in. No one sends me free records and I'm fine with that. I actually like to go shopping for records, and I always have. When people just give them to me, I don't seem to get as interested.

On an old blog I deleted awhile back I picked Sleater-Kinney's The Woods as my album of the year. I hadn't really listened to them before that, and someone told me I should check that out because Carrie Brownstein is a kick ass guitar player. I figured what the hell, I may as well check it out, because they'd be a band that would be easy to trade back in if I hated it. Well, I didn't hate it. I loved it. I thought Carrie was more than just a kick ass guitar player, and I thought Janet Weiss sounded like a train hauling ass through a tunnel on the drums. So when I heard that Carrie and Janet were forming a new band after the apparently pretty amicable breakup of Sleater-Kinney, I figured I was in for sure.

I don't know what I think of the album cover, and I gotta say, colored vinyl would have made it much cooler, but if I were a teenager, I'd have hung the inner sleeve on my wall, thus proclaiming Carrie Brownstein one of my true Rock N Roll guitar gods (I suppose goddess in her case, but she'd have been there next to Rick Derringer and Steve Howe, for sure). Do you know why she's smiling in this picture? Because she can jump five feet in the air while making a hellacious racket on an electric guitar.

Getting to the album - Wild Flag is a band effort. Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole add the second guitar and more lead vocals and keyboards respectively. Timony's guitar isn't as tuned down as Corin Tucker's was in Sleater-Kinney, but there's still plenty of bottom end on this. My favorite thing about the album (besides Carrie's guitar) is that these are songs that don't seem half baked, or disconnected from each other because one seems to be Mary's or one seems to be Carrie's. They seem like a team effort, and Wild Flag sounds like a band with a purpose and not just a vanity project. I wish more songs had the attitude of Romance. It's fun. There's catchy sing-along parts and cool keyboards and it just sticks in your ear all day. By the time I'm done listening to it I've got the volume knob cranked to ridiculous levels because it just hits all the sweet spots, and the louder it is, the harder it hits them.

Future Crimes has this great guitar/keyboard part that is just begging to be played loud in a little bar, and Short Version is an electric guitar fan's dream. It's not some classic rock wankery, it's noisy and busy and coupled with Weiss' drumming it just packs an awesome wallop. Ending with the damned near epic Black Tiles is perfect. Maybe it's not a Sleater-Kinney album, but that's okay. It's a terrific first album, and even though all the reviews keep calling them a "supergroup," I think it sounds like a band that knows what it wants to be, without a bunch of egos getting in the way. This may be my favorite album of the year when all is said and done, but even if it isn't it's my favorite album I've bought lately.

Well, maybe second favorite. But that Pagans album cost me a lot of money and part of the reason it's loved so much is I couldn't believe I found it! Rock on, Wild Flag. Oh, and I hear it's Carrie's birthday today, so happy birthday!