Sleater-Kinney announces new album The Center Won't Hold, produced by St. Vincent
This morning, Sleater-Kinney confirmed what’s been suspected since it was revealed that it was working on new music with St. Vincent back in January: The rock trio has a new album—its tenth!—called The Center Won’t Hold coming out on August 16 on Mom + Pop Records. In a press release announcing the new album, the band says that The Center Won’t Hold is as political as all of its previous records, but with, as co-lead guitarist Carrie Brownstein puts it, an emphasis on “the person—ourselves or versions of ourselves or iterations of depression or loneliness—in the middle of the chaos.”
The announcement comes with the release of a new single, “The Future Is Here,” which puts a goth-pop filter on Sleater-Kinney’s typically hard-driving, classic rock-influenced sound. About the band’s new sound, drummer Janet Weiss says: “I think for Carrie and [co-lead guitarist] Corin [Tucker] it was liberating to explore a different sound palette. Annie [Clark] has a lot of experience building her own music with keyboards and synthesizers so she could be our guide to help us make sense of this new landscape and still sound like us.”
As mentioned up top, the album was produced by Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, whose influence can not only be heard in Sleater-Kinney’s new music, but also seen in the cover art for the first single off of The Center Won’t Hold, “Hurry On Home,” about which we said that St. Vincent’s “slinky sexiness collides with Sleater-Kinney’s heavy riffage with all the power—and entertainment value—of Godzilla battling King Kong,” in our A-Sides writeup at the end of May.
Sleater-Kinney is also embarking on an extensive international tour in support of The Center Won’t Hold that begins in Spokane, WA on October 9. Tickets for that tour go on sale today; an updated list of dates, with newly added shows marked in bold, is below.
Sleater-Kinney The Center Won’t Hold Tour
10/9—Fox Theatre—Spokane, WA
10/11—Knitting Factory Concert House—Boise, ID
10/12—The Depot—Salt Lake City, UT
10/13—Ogden Theatre—Denver, CO
10/15—Palace Theatre—Minneapolis, MN
10/16—Riverside Theatre—Milwaukee, WI
10/18—Riviera Theatre—Chicago, IL
10/19-Riviera Theatre—Chicago, IL
10/20—Old Ferester’s Paristown Hall—Louisville, KY
10/21—Ryman Auditorium—Nashville, TN
10/23—Tabernacle—Atlanta, GA
10/25—The Anthem—Washington, DC
10/26—Stage AE—Pittsburgh, PA
10/27—The Fillmore—Philadelphia, PA
10/29—House Of Blues—Boston, MA
10/30—Kings Theatre—Brooklyn, NY
10/31—Hammerstein Ballroom—New York, NY
11/1—Newport Music Hall—Columbus, OH
11/3—Rebel Complex—Toronto, ON
11/4—Majestic Theatre—Detroit, MI
11/5—The Pageant—St. Louis, MO
11/7—House Of Blues—Houston, TX
11/8—House Of Blues—Dallas, TX
11/9—ACL Live at the Moody Theatre
11/11—The Van Buren—Phoenix, AZ
11/12—The Observatory North Park—San Diego, CA
11/13—The Observatory OC—Santa Ana, CA
11/14—Hollywood Palladium—Los Angeles, CA
11/16—Fox Theatre—Oakland, CA
11/17—Fox Theatre—Oakland, CA
11/19—Crystal Ballroom—Portland, OR
11/20—Crystal Ballroom—Portland, OR
11/21—Commodore Ballroom—Vancouver, BC
11/23—Paramount Theatre—Seattle, WA
11/24—Paramount Theatre—Seattle, WA
2/18/2020—Astra—Berlin, DE
2/19—Paradiso—Amsterdam, NL
2/21—Botanique—Brussels, BE
2/22—Batschkapp—Frankfurt, DE
2/24—Le Trianon—Paris, FR
2/26—O2 Academy Brixton—London, UK
2/27—Manchester Academy—Manchester, UK
2/28—Barrowland Ballroom—Glasgow, UK
3/1—Vicar Street—Dublin, IE