Sleater-Kinney's newest stretches no boundaries

The band that Greil Marcus, the god of rock critics, dubbed the best band in rock and roll is back after a two-year hiatus. Sleater-Kinney has returned with its most experimental album to date. The musicians are no longer sporting the "Ramones read Newsweek" assault on the listener. Instead, One Beat is a showcase for instrumental aptitude.\nThe women try out a few different hats on their new record. The overall sound is a My Bloody Valentine-like trance and drone, and because of that, it may be the first Sleater-Kinney record that can become tiresome. On "Step Aside," a Motown-style horn section backs them, and on the riot-grrrl vamp "Prisstina," "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" composer Stephen Trask adds a dirty Casio keyboard riff.\nS-K sounds like the musicians spent hours perfecting the instrumental tracks to One Beat. Since the band's beginning it's stretched the boundaries of what punk rock can be, but the group seemed to work with a cautious ease here. The first few songs (especially the Sept. 11 cry "Far Away") lets the listener settle in with the subtle, buried melodies. The rest of the record, however, suffers from a laissez-faire approach to the band's old sound.\nDuring the period of 1996 to 1999, when Sleater-Kinney released Call the Doctor, Dig Me Out and The Hot Rock in succession, the band was reminiscent of the Rolling Stones in 1967. The musicians had an arrogant confidence that made it impossible for them to make anything but a fabulous record. In contrast, One Beat seems destined to be caught between that period and the next (if there happens to be one).\nLike rivers, formulas also run dry, and Sleater-Kinney seems deliberately aware of the inevitable. In the annals of rock and roll history, lasting artistic veneration has come in two ways: a drastic change of center (example: Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music) or by simply going away for awhile. Sleater-Kinney by no means needs to leave the scene, but perhaps One Beat just didn't go far enough.