Sleater-Kinney returned from an eight year hiatus in 2014. The band released the highly acclaimed "No Cities To Love" the following year, and that record rocked like there was no tomorrow. Trusting that tomorrow would come, Sleater-Kinney took their time for an album to follow that one. "The Center Won't Hold" is the band's response to our fragmented, divisive times.
With St. Vincent (Annie Clark) producing, there is an audible evolution to the Sleater-Kinney sound on the new album, with new textures and spaces. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein formed the band in Olympia, Washington in 1994. Drummer Janet Weiss joined in 1996, and just two months ago announced her departure from Sleater-Kinney.
In discussing the record's themes, Carrie Brownstein put it this way: "How does brokenness walk? Or move through the world?....We were really thinking about the person...in the middle of the chaos." Corin Tucker said this about the title track: "'The Center Won't Hold' drops you into the world of catastrophe....We're not taking it easy on the audience. That song is meant to be really heavy and dark."
