Worst Sleater-Kinney Album

Going with One Beat, which does nothing for me beyond "Oh!" "Step Aside" and maaaybe "O2"

seconded.

This poll may have an interesting split, depending on when people came onboard.

For me One Beat is the only album of theirs worth owning. I still cannot get through Call The Doctor, which I find physically painful to listen to. In fact it put me off the band to such an extent that I never would have heard One Beat except it was on in a record store and I thought it was some X-Ray Spex tribute and investigated.

either one beat or all hands...one beat is probably worse but all hands disappointed me more

It seems that Hot Rock has more tracks that I skip when they come up on shuffle, but generally everything up through All Hands is unimpeachable.

I still cannot get through Call The Doctor, which I find physically painful to listen to.

Madness!

My favorite albums of theirs are Hot Rock and Call The Doctor. Voted for All Hands because it contains my least favorite song of theirs, "Milkshake and Honey."

All Hands On The Bad One.

That's their "message" album, where they come out against Limp Bizkit, rap rock and the whole "show us your tits" crowd. A noble idea, but as a result sounds a bit dated. And, uh, the songs aren't as good.

not a big fan of the band in general but have come around over time to realizing they were pretty good, All Hans one of the main reasons it took me so long. ugh @ that album.

The Woods -- it was totally redundant.

S/T or The Woods, with S/T edging it out because it's terribly undercooked and sloppy. Plus, it has no Janet.

yeah in reality sleater-kinney didn't become SLEATER-KINNEY til janet was on board. but call the doctor gets by on great songs and corin and carrie more than compensating in the ferocity department.

In retrospect, I think first real red flag with these guys was "Banned At The End Of The World." Having made amazing music out of internal dramas and won Four Stars For Life in return, they now had time to tell us they had no fear of Y2K.

I didn't mind that one -- with a drummer like Janet and the number of sheer amazing songs on The Hot Rock it didn't feel like a defensive posture at all. The meta songs on AHOTBO, however...

Yeah don't get me wrong I spent spring break 1999 listening to nothing but that album, I only realized it's "uh oh" status years later.

S/T by a mile. Can't understand the All Hands hate, was the first thing of theirs I heard and still sounds good to me.

Another for All Hands On The Bad One. The only one I don't like.

My first S-K was Call The Doctor although I think Dig Me Out was already out when I got it. Those 2 are still my faves.

A band that truly got better with age. Their last album was their best, and forced to discard one of these, I'd spring for the debut over anything else.

S/t onlt has about three good songs on, and one I love (How To Play Dead). The rest are 4star goodness or omg greatest album ever contenders.

Also, Milkshake and Honey = super amazingness.

Two lesbian friends used to play "Milkshake and Honey" endlessly – it was their love song.

Banned At The End Of The World

ugh that is an awful song. the hot rock was kind of disappointing to me when it came out because it seemed like they were addressing their new found fame and I was like "i don't give a fuck, just write good songs". but still, the Woods is the worst thing they put out.

haven't heard the s/t so i'm going with The Woods for being so goddamn unlistenably recorded/mastered

the hot rock = most underrated by far

Is it still underrated? Was it ever? Most of its reviews – like reviews for ALL their albums, generally – were overwhelmingly positive.

s/t. The Woods exists in a separate plane from the rest of their material for me, so I'm not surprised to see it getting singled out a lot here, but damn if it isn't one of the finest rock records of the aughts.

i would def pay for a remaster of the woods, but as it stands it's just too horrid sounding

The problem with The Hot Rock is mainly in its sequencing. A lot of the clunkers are up front (obviously not Start Together, one of their very best songs) and towards the end it gets going.

weird band--i was totally into them when they were around and i almost never go back and listen to their records these days

Honestly I'm pretty bored both by the s/t and Call the Doctor, voted s/t.

My favorite songs on THR are at the very end ("The Size of Our Love" through A Quarter to Three"), and it's my favorite concluding sequence of theirs.

(xpost)

i would def pay for a remaster of the woods, but as it stands it's just too horrid sounding

along with "mystics", dave fridmann's most extreme misstep w/r/t overuse of compression during mixing.

tbf, I was always under the impression that the record's sound was a deliberate choice on the part of the band.

Fridmann is definitely a fan of overcompression, but there's no precedent in his work for anything that noisy.

i like the sound of the Woods

yeah i mean maybe it was them, because any kind of quasi rational engineer would have been like "hey uh...are you all SURE this is what you want to do"

also, fridmen produced it right? it could have been squashed to death in mastering and maybe he had nothing to do with it

I'm cool with the sound of the woods, my problem with that album is that even the best songs (and there are a few I'll take over anything on One Beat) are overlong, repetitive and draggy by the end.

Hard for me to vote here, since I've never heard the first two, but I'd vote for The Woods among the ones I've heard.

The Hot Rock is their best by a long shot for me, and All Hands is second-best.

If Dave Fridmann committed any crime on The Woods, it was probably not making Carrie Brownstein redo her guitar solo during that interminable breakdown on "Entertain."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

"Dig Me Out-0=an otm ilm