FROM TOP: GREG WILLIAMS; JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGESReviews Music
84 | Rolling Stone
Tucker invokes potently on the torch-song
closer, “Broken.” Producer Annie Clark of
St. Vincent, who was 12 when S-K’s 1996
breakthrough, Call the Doctor, was released,
makes it a summit between tag-team genera-
tions of rock heroines. Given No Cities’ lean-in
to Seventies New Wave and Clark’s pivot into
’10s meta-pop on Masseducation, it’s a perfect
match, made most explicit on the single
“Hurry on Home.” Splashed with St. Vincent
sonics, it’s a psychodrama of sexual-power
dynamics. (Guitarist Carrie Brownstein’s past
romantic links to both Clark and Tucker add
backstory, as does a brilliantly weird Miranda
July booty-call video.)
If there’s a through line to The Center Won’t
Hold, it’s social media alienation and all it
engenders. Sleater-Kinney have always made
meaning in physical spaces where we can
experience sweaty liberation from dated rock
tropes. Here, physical connection feels more
essential than ever. “Reach out and touch
me/I’m stuck on the edge.... The darkness is
winning again,” Tucker sings on “Reach Out,”
part girl-group lover’s plea, part synth-pop
suicide-at-the-beach fantasy, with a sly nod to
Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” “The Fu-
ture Is Here” gives voice to someone who be-
gins and ends her day “on a tiny screen” and
confesses, “Never have I felt so goddamned
lost and alone.” On “Can I Go On,” every last
person “is wired/To machines, it’s obscene.”
It’s a status quo that makes the group’s con-
tinued existence — especially given drummer
Janet Weiss’ post-LP departure — a big deal.
They don’t take it for granted. “Do you feast
on nostalgia?” asks Tucker with a wink on
“Ruins,” a dubby march conjuring vintage PJ
Harvey and the nightmare of 2019 America.
But nostalgia correctly weaponized is a
mighty thing. See “LOVE,” the set’s most
affecting song. A Kraftwerk-ing jam that reads
as intra-band mash note, it chronicles small-
town punk rage, broke-ass van touring, and
the cleansing fire of art. And it ends in a blood
oath to one another and to fans: “There’s
nothing more frightening and nothin’ more
obscene/Than a well-worn body demanding to
be seen.” Brownstein follows it with a hearty
“fuck!” — a “fuck” that, in its enraged glee,
sums up everything that makes the band
great, now and forever.
SLEATER-KINNEYT
HOM YORKE describes
his excellent new solo
album, Anima, as
“dystopian,” which isn’t the
hugest surprise in the world.
With or without Radiohead,
he’s spent his career mapping
out the dystopia we’re living
in. Yorke could have spent
the entire record freestylingover “Old Town Road” and it
still would have turned out
dystopian. But nobody could
accuse him of overreacting.
At a moment when the world
is in even scarier shape than
the last time Radiohead took
its temperature, on 2016’s
A Moon Shaped Pool, he’s
moved on to new nightmares.wave percussion loops. He’s
tapping into anxieties both
geopolitical and personal.
It’s “woke,” but in the sense
of “sleep-deprived so long
the fluttering of your eyelids
booms like kettle drums,”
and that realm of insomniac
body-freezing angst is the
zone where Yorke feels right
at home.
The music has none of
the uplifting rock-band rush
of last year’s acclaimed
Radiohead tour. Instead, he
strips down for the old-school
beatbox claps of “The Axe,”
muttering, “Goddamn ma-
chinery, why won’t it speak
to me?/One day I am gonna
take an ax to it.” It builds to a
very Yorke-ian question, as he
queries his computer screen:
“Where’s that love you
promised me?”
A typical highlight is
the superbly titled “I Am a
Very Rude Person,” with its
sinuous twist-and-crawl bass
line under a Gregorian-chant
choir. “I have to destroy to
create,” Yorke sneers. “I have
to be rude to your face/I’m
breaking up the turntables/
Now I’m gonna watch your
party die.” His voice fades
under a guitar loop that
builds like Robert Fripp
filtered through Sonic Youth’s
“Karen Koltrane.” The party
dies, but not without a fight.
“Runwayaway” is a swirl of
Byrds-ian guitar jangle, as
Yorke repeats, “This is when
you know who your real
friends are.” As if to imply:
Better hope you have some.
The prize is “Dawn
Chorus,” a title that’s well
known to Radiohead fans
as a bootleg track the band
never recorded. It’s complex
but sparse, with a lonesome
phased keyboard drone while
Yorke murmurs, “I think I
missed something, but I’m
not sure what.” Yorke sounds
scared, anxious, helpless,
enraged — yet he also sounds
unmistakably alive. And on
an album as bleak as Anima,
that’s a very welcome sign
of hope.Anima is 48 minutes of
abstract electro confession-
als, written and produced in
close collaboration with Nigel
Godrich. Within the first few
minutes, Yorke’s digitally
warped voice is gulping,
“I can’t breathe” and “No
water,” over “Idio teque”-style
synth swerves and glitch-THOM YORKE GETS DARKER
The Radiohead frontman’s solo LP is the perfect
response to our dystopian times By ROB SHEFFIELDThom Yorke
Anima
XL
4+++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.Meet Modern R&B’s Smooth New ‘King’
LAST YEAR, Atlanta crooner Jacquees dubbed himself the “king of R&B.” The boast made
headlines, and elders from John Legend to Diddy weighed in with responses. On Round
2, Jacquees’ first LP since attaining royalty status, the singer shows he certainly has one
of the great voices in his genre right now — glinting but pliable, skimming over beats with
guileless, melismatic charm as he expertly channels classic R&B from the Nineties and early
2000s. “Who’s giving you all your love?” Jacquees asks on the innocently yearning “Who’s,”
wholly confident he’ll win you over. You’d be foolish to bet against him. ELIAS LEIGHTBREAKINGJacquees