Of Rush and riot grrrls

Getting old with Geddy Lee and Sleater-Kinney

Rush. Sleater-Kinney. One is the subject of an excellent new memoir. The other has a new record out this week.

(This week’s live music listings are here.)

I wrote this about Rush’s “YYZ” for TVO last year. I wrote this Exclaim cover story about Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods in 2007, and this for Maclean’s about their 2014 comeback.

Two bands with fairly mutually exclusive fan bases, two bands from very different worlds that don’t appear to have much in common. And yet:

From day one, Corin Tucker’s wail was compared to Geddy Lee’s — and it wasn’t a compliment. Her voice, like his, is, at the very least, divisive: a make-or-break element of each artist’s music for the average listener. Has Tucker ever done Rush karaoke? I’d pay money to see that.

In that 2007 piece, I described the way in which “…Corin is modestly unleashing The Voice. It's the voice we all wish we had: the voice that explodes upon impact, the voice from deep in your chest that fills your entire body, the voice that demands everything from the listener, the voice that stands as the greatest weapon against enforced silence and sterility.” I don’t feel that way about Geddy, but I’m sure his biggest fans do.

Both are power trios. One didn’t have a bassist. The other had a bassist who basically played three instruments at the same time. Both bands expanded their sound over time, with mixed results: gaining new fans while losing others — yet always acknowledged for their integrity.

Both make deadly serious music. Both are accused of being pretentious, of being overly earnest, of being “no rock’n’roll fun.” But Rush were total goofballs who always knew how to poke fun at themselves (showing up to accept National Lampoon’s “Band of the Millenium” designation), while Carrie Brownstein co-created Portlandia, a show that gleefully skewered her own community.

That clip features Geddy’s daughter, as “Kugel.” Speaking of children:

One band of brothers lost their drummer to brain cancer. One band of sisters lost their drummer when she realized she was no longer an equal creative partner.

Sleater-Kinney continued on with auxiliary players (their last album was made with both their touring drummer and a session drummer). Rush will never be Rush again, although Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson have said they’re itching to at least do something together again, whatever that might be. I’m the only person in the world hoping they’ll call Janet Weiss. (Not to play Rush songs, but to do something new.)

Both (or Geddy, anyway, not Rush) have new works dealing with loss.

For paid subscribers below, more about Geddy’s book and S-K’s third decade.