Pitchfork’s Sub Pop 20

Pitchfork have compiled a list of their favourite 20 releases on Sub Pop to celebrate Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary. Sleater-Kinney’s sole release on Sub Pop, The Woods made the cut:

Sleater-Kinney had nothing left to prove to anyone, save perhaps themselves, when they left longtime home Kill Rock Stars for Sub Pop. The label move seemed more symbolic than anything else, from one Pacific Northwest indie to another, but the record they made with Sub Pop, The Woods, was a radical statement. Complex 10-minute songs, guitar solos, and some of the most brazenly in-the-red production ever set to tape– thanks, Dave Fridmann!– Sleater-Kinney’s seventh album was a conscious break from the band’s past. Even if the end result turned out, sadly, to be an amicable breakup, the disc still stands as a victorious exclamation point, a loud, proud proclamation of punk rock’s undiminished potential. “I think Dave made a record that sounded like what was in our heads,” singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein told me at the time, “except maybe even more grotesque and wrong!” But rarely has wrong sounded so right.