LIVE REVIEWS       Sleater-Kinney: Koko, London 02 Sep 2005 Three piece, all girl punk rock band. The best kind really. In this day and age girls definitely do punk better than fellas. Bloke punks just look stupid whereas girl punks look clever and cool. Sleater-Kinney are clever and cool as well as being, to quote someone I have never met before, “probably the most important band working at the moment”. High praise indeed but certainly not misplaced. This Washington based outfit, named for a road near where they used to practice, have been well respected since they got together in 1995, a product of the Riot Grrrl movement that spawned Le Tigre, The Donnas and that more recently influenced the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. With just two guitars and a drummer their intuitive melodies and highly politicised lyrics alone are enough to get them by, but it’s the technical proficiency of Sleater-Kinney that makes them such a highly watchable act. Finding a square inch of space in Camden’s excellent venue Koko (how long until those Carling rascals get their hands in it?) was not an easy thing to do, even with an early curfew forcing the band to come on at the very inconvenient time of 8.30pm. Fortunately though these ladies were professionals and didn’t waste any time belting out pretty much non-stop indie punk rock for an hour and a half. The close harmonies between guitarist number one, the gloriously voiced Corin Tucker, and guitarist number two, the magic fingered Carrie Brownstein, were a treat to hear, especially on the catchy ‘Oh’. However as the band got going it became clear that the drumming of Janet Weiss was one of the main attractions, it getting fiercer and more like musical Kung-fu with every song. Turning the crowd into a sea of rapturous and adoring slaves with clear favorites such as ‘All Hands on the Bad One’ and ‘One More Hour’, Sleater-Kinney gave a commanding performance, that elicited not one but two encores, the second even appearing to be genuinely unrehearsed. Having torn up the stages at Reading and Leeds, and taken the opportunity to pop into Manchester, Dublin and Belfast, the ladies are now rumored to be supporting Pearl Jam in Canada this Autumn. Whatever their huge potential, this band do seem comfortable, if not downright committed, to staying underground and enjoying the cult following. And to be fair if you were an intellectual feminist punk, so would you. words: Robin Harris