I don't know why I've been dreading this Wild Flag album exactly. Sleater-Kinney is one of my three favorite bands (the other two are Sonic Youth and the Dismemberment Plan, in case you're wondering), and as such I should trust Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss harder to carry a band that also includes the less impressive Mary Timony. It's just, well, Corin Tucker means a lot to me. And S-K was an unusually aspect-dependent band. All its parts balanced each other out and held each other up, powerfully yet also with an interesting fragility -- Tucker's rickety voice prone to sputtering into a pile of who-knows-what at any given moment. So: can they do it without her?
Romance
Circus-organ riff, blocky guitar-- this sounds exactly like Sleater-Kinney circa One Beat, but it's a little more airborne, with less heft. Is that a key change in the chorus? Tucker wouldn't have dared that. Score one for Timony's prog tendencies. The keyboards are filling out little corners, nice.