SLEATER-KINNEY Mere Anarchy

In 1919, poet W.B. Yeats wrote “The Second Coming,” his chilling expression of the despair after surveying the chaos created after World War I and the growing revolutionary violence in his own Ireland. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” he wrote, “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Nearly a hundred years later, The Wall Street Journal declared 2016 “The Year of Yeats,” as lines from the poem had been quoted so frequently following a series of European terror attacks, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. Having spent their career creating songs that explore the intersection of the personal and the political, Sleater-Kinney would reference Yeats’ words when they sat down in early 2017 to begin work on their 10th full-length release, The Center Won’t Hold. They were, however, careful not to replicate the poem’s unrelenting bleakness.

“We can’t separate ourselves from the time that we live in, and to yearn for something that came before or to count on something that is coming up is to deny where we are right now and to end up tuning out or retreating,” explains guitarist and vocalist Carrie Brownstein. “That’s where I think people end up in modes or stasis or depression, which we’re trying to counter with this record. I grapple with that in real life, as someone who can veer towards misanthropy. But I don’t want