It is an album with an optimistic title. It is a collection of songs linking a shiny pristine musical chain. Sleater-Kinney’s latest is now my frontrunner for album of the year.

Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein deliver something that should rightfully be steering attention away from almost everything on the popular music charts. We are emerging from a global pandemic, hopefully on a path of wellness collectively and individually.

The Title track, which also opens the record, is a blaze of raw energy and aggression. It is a song that brings the right amount of chill without losing a shred of its’ edge. “High In The Grass” starts peacefully before slamming into a driving, heavy crash of sound. It reflects on how things have changed over the year. More of us are out more and emerging from the tall blades of grass.

My favourite track from the record “Method”, bounces through the speakers with wonderfully catchy riff work and staccato punching melodic vocals. It reads like a PowerPoint presentation of the tidal waves some may have experienced in the previous year with so much uncertainty and tragedy dripping into everyday life. It speaks of the frustration so many of us felt while asking for people to show sympathy and empathy do more people. It’s a search for clarity in the chaos. It’s expressing and embracing love, anger and dispelling the myth that we always have to fake a smile in order to make it.

This is a great dose of musical medicine to mark the halfway point of 2021. It’s an excuse to travel back through the entire Sleater-Kinney discography and listen to their musical journey.

@WriterDann