I heard something about how the creation of this album was strained, but I don't know anything about that, so no music history for you today. Maybe next time I post a Sleater-Kinney song.

The first time I listened to The Woods, I was not impressed. It sounded like a lot of static and noise, and not at all something that I wanted to listen to. I kept trying for some reason, though, and eventually Entertain got through to me.

I have musical weaknesses, things that will make me love a song pretty much no matter what. One is falsetto background "ooohs" and "ahhhs", another is call and response vocals, and yet another are songs that are anthemic. This song has the first two, and it was most certainly the "ahh-ahh-ahh" in the background of the choruses that caught my attention the first time.

After that the rest of the album fell in line. Yes, it's a lot of static (almost so much that you'd swear someone had to have said "isn't this too much static?" at some point) and it's grungy (which is part of it's charm!) but it's also loud and it fucking rocks.

I've got a friend who's really into metal, all forms of metal, melodic death and all that jazz. I played him some Sleater-Kinney off this album and said, "See, this is what I consider heavy, what I think rocks harder than anything else," and he just looked at me baffled.

To me, it's true. Metal is all dudes grunting and yelling and thrashing on guitars super fast, and it doesn't necessarily sound heavy or powerful to me. (Or it's dudes singing in super high pitched voices over screaming guitars which just makes me think the music is being performed by a bunch of spandex clad long haired homosexuals.) I've got no connection to that, and most of the time the lyrics are nonsense or indecipherable anyway, so what is there in it that is heavy? I can't rock out to a 246 beats per minute double bass-drum blast. That's not going to get me emotionally charged.

Now, you put a couple of chicks behind some instruments cranked up so loud that they crunch and grind, and let them wail about sellouts and our lousy government (or formerly lousy government, it's hard to get used to that, like writing 2008 when you meant 2009 'cause the year is so fresh) and I will tell you that you've found the secret to music that rocks my face off.

It's a shame that so few bands rock like Sleater-Kinney do. It's also a shame that, much like Nickel Creek in 2005 as well, that they released their best album and then disbanded. It's probably a good thing that some bands decide to give it up at their peak, so we don't have to watch them slowly wither away into success inspired pretentious jerk-off competitions (imagine if Radiohead had broken up after OK Computer or Kid A or even Amnesiac) or rape the rotting corpse of their reputation (imagine Rilo Kiley breaking up after More Adventurous, Smashing Pumpkins after Ava Adore, The Beatles after Sgt. Peppers, The Who after Teenage Wasteland).

OK, the last two were a joke.