Album: No Cities To Love
Year: 2015
. . .
Of course, just because Sleater-Kinney broke up doesn’t mean that the individual members dropped out of the world. Janet Weiss joined Stephen Malkmus’ band The Jicks, and played on a couple of their albums in the 2000s, Corin Tucker put out a couple of solo albums, and of course Carrie Brownstein re-teamed with Weiss in the one-off Wild Flag project, and almost immediately afterwards became an indie TV star.
That was, of course, in the show Portlandia, which she co-created with former SNL cast member, Fred Armisen, and ran for 77 episodes over eight seasons on IFC, and far more people saw her in it than ever bought a single Sleater-Kinney album. For my part, while I only watched the first couple of seasons, I remember her as a low-key, reliably funny presence, especially against Armisen’s ongoing over-the-topness.
In any event, at some point Brownstein, Tucker and Weiss were ready not just to tackle a big reissue of their older catalog, but the writing, recording and touring of a brand-new album, 2015’s No Cities To Love, which was three years in the making, and which picked up right where The Woods left off by being nothing at all like The Woods.
While songs like “Surface Envy” and “Hey Darling” recalled the noisefests of years gone by, I liked the slightly more subtle title track, which started off with the slyly funny chorus, as sung in harmony by Tucker and Brownstein.
There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
That’s followed by a shortish, cool-sounding guitar solo by Brownstein over an almost bass-like guitar from Tucker, after which Brownstein sings a couple verses about atomic tourism, as the chorus gets bigger and bigger each time it comes around.
There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
It’s not the weather, it’s the nothing we love!
I saw Sleater-Kinney on this tour, on May 1, 2015 at the Hollywood Palladium, and they were excellent, running through
songs from most of their career, focusing on the No Cities to Love album, and climaxing with suitable raucous encore of “Let’s Call It Love” before chilling with “Modern Girl.” Since I’d never gotten a chance to seem them back in the day, I was glad I got to see them just a week or so before my life unexpectedly sideways as my entire department got laid off.
In any event, the final version of the chorus of “No Cities to Love” is the biggest of all.
There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
It’s not the cities, it’s the weather we love!
There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It’s not the weather, it’s the nothing we love!
It’s not the weather, it’s the people we love!
Which, of course, totally nails it. As did No Cities to Love, the album, which — remember, we’re in 2015 now — was the highest charting album in their entire career, making it to #18 on the Billboard albums chart, which was kind of unexpected, and #5 in the Pazz & Jop Critics poll, which wasn’t.
After that, Sleater-Kinney recorded one more album with Janet Weiss, 2019’s disappointing The Center Won’t Hold, and just a few months ago released the Weiss-less Path To Wellness, which I kinda liked. And while they may never reach the heights of the past, I’ll still remain interested in anything Tucker & Brownstein do in the future.
“No Cities to Love”
“No Cities to Love” Official Music Video
“No Cities to Love” Live on NPR, 2015
“No Cities To Love” (live on Sound Opinions, 2015)
Did you miss a Certain Song? Follow me on Twitter: @barefootjim
The Certain Songs Database
A filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.
Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)
Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page