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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Sleater-Kinney’s “Live In Paris”

Not since Public Image Ltd.’s Paris Au Printemps have a band, a city, a season and a cause (well, kind of a cause, maybe a cause célèbre) joined as one to create an entire package such as this. As PiL’s tart anger-energy live effort caught this band at its knobby peak, signaling too the rise of post-punk mutation and its eventual leap into the mainstream, the first new union of Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss since its 2006 retirement (captured by 2015’s No Cities To Love and this eventual tour showcase) portrayed the need for riot wimmen to unite in an expression of pre-Trump-ian rage, to say nothing of showing off the unique tone of this trio’s bass-less, trebly torpor. Without allowing too much ’90s nostalgia to drive them or this recording (though this La Cigale gig had its share of oblong oldies-but-grrl-goodies from past classics such as The Woods, Dig Me Out, One Beat, The Hot Rock and Call The Doctor with the silly “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” S-K’s finest furriest hour), this night in Paris has the punch of the present. How else can you explain starting off this album with the snot-nosed paean to Stepford Wife-i-ness, “Price Tag,” and holding court with a majority of its newest album’s toughest tracks such as “A New Wave” and “Surface Envy?” As the live album—and such an odd thing to behold happily so many years after the grand smash likes of Kiss Alive or Got Live If You Want It—winds down, to end with a crackling new punk tune (“Dig Me Out”) as well as a taut, raw earlier one (its caustic retirement swan song “Modern Girl”) is just an epiphany and a joy.

—A.D. Amorosi