Description
Sleater-Kinney – The Center Won’t Hold – Compact Disc
Sleater-Kinney’s The Center Won’t Hold is the band’s tenth studio album, released on August 16, 2019 by Mom + Pop Music. It was produced by St. Vincent (Annie Clark) and is the first Sleater-Kinney album without longtime drummer Janet Weiss, who left the band during the album’s creation; the record instead uses a mix of programmed and session-performed drums across its tracks. The core lineup on the album is Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, with additional musicians contributing.
This is one of the most stylistically different records in the Sleater-Kinney catalog. Compared with the guitar-forward intensity of their classic run and the punchier rock approach of No Cities to Love, The Center Won’t Hold leans heavily into art-pop and electronic textures: synths, looped percussion, processed vocals, and tightly edited song structures. The songs are mostly concise (the album runs 38 minutes), often built around rhythmic patterns and hooks rather than extended guitar interplay, and the production foregrounds sharp sonic contrasts—dry drums against glossy synth pads, clipped vocal phrasing against sudden bursts of noise.
The tracklist includes several headline songs that show the album’s range and intent. “The Center Won’t Hold” (the opener and title track) establishes the record’s anxious, modernist tone; “Hurry on Home” is a cleaner, more immediately melodic centerpiece; and “Can I Go On” uses dance-punk momentum and repetition to push its emotional tension forward. Elsewhere, “Love” goes for a darker, more electronic pulse, while “Broken” and “Bad Dance” emphasize rhythm and atmosphere as much as riffs. Lyrically, the album is concerned with instability—personal, social, and political—and the sense of a world that feels off-balance, reflected in songs that often sound intentionally unsettled.
T
he album drew a wide range of reactions precisely because it’s such a sharp pivot. Some reviewers praised it as a bold reinvention and a productive collision between Sleater-Kinney’s intensity and St. Vincent’s studio-forward approach, while others felt the change in instrumentation and drum feel softened the band’s traditional impact. Either way, it’s an important record in their story: a document of transition, experimentation, and a willingness to reshape what “Sleater-Kinney” can sound like in a different era.
Brand new, never played and still in the factory plastic
Track Listing
The Center Won’t Hold
Hurry On Home
Reach Out
Can I Go On
Restless
Ruins
Love
Bad Dance
The Future Is Here
The Dog/The Body
Broken
Hurry On Home
The Dog/The Body
