Sleater-Kinney - One Beat (LP)

Some albums feel like dispatches from a moment when the world tilted. Sleater-Kinney’s One Beat is one of those. Dropping in August 2002 on Kill Rock Stars, it caught the band at full velocity, guitars sparking and Janet Weiss driving everything with the kind of drumming that sets your spine straight. It is political, personal and punchy, often all at once. Listening now, you can still feel the heat coming off it.

One Beat sits between All Hands on the Bad One and The Woods, and you can hear how the trio sharpened their lines without sanding off any of the nerve. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s guitars snap into each other like live wires, Corin’s vibrato cutting through with fierce clarity while Carrie’s lines dart and jab. Weiss remains the secret weapon, not just a powerhouse but an arranger from the kit, pushing choruses into the red or dropping the floor out when the lyrics need space.

A lot of the talk around the record, then and now, sits with its context. Corin had a son in 2001, and the band has been open about how his difficult birth fed into the writing. You can hear that on Sympathy, which ends the album with a hushed, trembling kind of courage. It is not a lullaby so much as a prayer, a reminder that the personal can feel more radical than any slogan. Elsewhere the news of the time comes roaring in. Far Away takes the shock and muddle of watching 9/11 unfold and turns it into guitar sparks, while Combat Rock looks at the drumbeat to war and refuses to march. None of it reads like a lecture. The band writes in scenes and snapshots, so you get the pulse and confusion of the day rather than a finger wag.

What stops the album from being swallowed by its own seriousness is how alive it sounds. The title track hits like a starter pistol. Oh! is a gem, bright and sneaky, a rare Sleater-Kinney song that flirts with pop without losing the bite. Step Aside adds horns that punch through the chorus and tease out an R&B undercurrent that was always there in Weiss’s swing. Light Rail Coyote turns a Portland sighting into a myth about cities and wildness, a love letter to a place that is changing, maybe too fast. O2 runs on breathless riffs and a kind of oxygen panic that feels apt for a band who played like they had no time to waste.

John Goodmanson was back in the producer’s chair, and it shows. The sound is lean but not thin, all midrange muscle with just enough air around the cymbals. Vocals sit close to the mics, as if the band is singing from the next room. It is the classic Sleater-Kinney trick, intimacy at volume, and it makes One Beat a joy to play loud. On vinyl you really hear the interplay, Weiss’s toms hugging the bottom while the guitars braid and snap. If you’re crate digging for One Beat vinyl at a Melbourne record store, give the wax a clean spin and listen to the way Step Aside’s brass blooms on the chorus. That is the record doing exactly what it was built to do.

The reception at the time matched the performance. Critics across the board lined up to praise it, from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone, and fans have long treated it as a high point. Part of that is the writing, which is tight and unafraid. Part of it is the chemistry, which sounds unbreakable here. Bands with two guitarists often fall into solos or sludge. Sleater-Kinney never does. They argue, agree and weave, and when they lock into a chorus the effect is both heady and physical. It is also a reminder of how singular their voice was in early 2000s indie rock, noisy but tuneful, political but messy in the right ways.

If you collect Sleater-Kinney vinyl, One Beat is a cornerstone, the record you pull when someone asks what makes this band special. It pairs beautifully with Dig Me Out for sheer attack, then points toward the heavier sprawl of The Woods. For those who shop from home, you can buy Sleater-Kinney records online easily enough, though this one disappears fast when a fresh pressing lands. Hunting for Sleater-Kinney albums on vinyl has become a mini sport for some of us in vinyl records Australia circles, and this title explains why. It plays like a broadcast from a hard year, but it gives you energy rather than taking it.

Two decades on, One Beat still feels current. The questions it asks have not gone away, and the joy it carries is stubborn in the best sense. Spin it, let the guitars talk to each other, and you will hear a band holding their nerve and finding light through noise. That is the thrill. That is why One Beat endures.