Introduction
With Call The Doctor, Sleater-Kinney begins to sound like, well, Sleater-Kinney! Their first album was very riot-grrl, with some flashes of later beyond-riot-grrl brilliance, but Call The Doctor is the beginning of the real thing. The guitars parts are more complex, with bigger riffs and less simple chords. The rhythms are more complex. The songs are longer. The lyrics are more complicated.
Call The Doctor is a very serious album. Riot-grrl (and S-K’s first album) is always serious, of course, but it’s also enraged, angry, out of control. Punk in general, for that matter, tends to have that lack of control, that simple “pounding it out” sound. If riot-grrl is an expression of bottled-up rage, a release of pure anger at the faults of the world, Call The Doctor is more an impassioned argument. It’s rational, reasonable, intelligent – and incredibly personal. And still angry. We’re still being screamed at, but at the same time we know that we deserve it, and moreover, why.
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