Grrrl Rock: One Beat Glory

Being a Sleater-Kinney fanboy is close to what it must be like to grow up with a much older and radder sister. She uses big words you don't understand and hurls temper tantrums at your parents with stunning eloquence. Her bargain bin clothes hold unknown feminine mystery. You're silently baffled by her total awesomeness, and all you can do is practice her moves in the mirror in your skivvies.

Musically, Sleater-Kinney get more expansive with each record, absorbing more style into their sound without ever sacrificing substance. On One Beat the riffs are angular as ever, and Janet Weiss' drumming is still ace. More than enough has already been written about Corin Tucker's wail, but I can't resist: Her banshee fury could pop eyes out of sockets, shatter plastic cups, crack the earth's crust. Goddamn. Thankfully, with her politics being what they are, that thing could never fall into the hands of the military.

They flow right from the, uh, cocksure swagger of the opening title track ("The word for me is fusion/But is real change an illusion?/Could I turn this place all upside down/and shake all of your fossils out") to "Far Away," a raging Sept. 11 anthem that transcends its unfortunate Rodney King-ified chorus. "Oh!" is flirty, beehived punk-love; "The Remainder" mates Modest Mouse with "White Rabbit"; "Step Aside" commandeers fist and booty with authority; and "Light-Rail Coyote" stomps with a Sabbath-sized riff.

One Beat lacks a firebolt like "Ironclad" or the breathtaking bittersweet beauty of "Leave You Behind" off of All Hands. But they make up for it on the album's closer and high point, the rousing "Sympathy." It's a plaintive, desperate prostration, written in part about the premature birth of Tucker's son, and she guts the blues with punk to beat the devil.

Hair, teeth, nails, brains and heart--Sleater-Kinney haven't saved rock and roll; they just bought it cheap a few years back, fixed it up real nice and have been gunning it around town every night since.