Sleater-Kinney-- Dig Me Out (Kill Rock Stars 279)

Sleater-Kinney's Call The Doctor was 1995's finest punk-rock gender-bender, leaving critics waxing ecstatic on countless year-end polls about the feminist implications of Corin Tucker wailing, "I wanna be your Joey Ramone."

A two-guitar and drums trio from Olympia, Washington, drummer Janet Weiss, Tucker and fellow six-stringer Carrie Brownstein shriek like pissed-off banshees, gracing their infectious beats with furious, angular riffs. Dig Me Out finds Sleater-Kinney's lineup altered (Weiss replaces Lora McFarlane on skins), but everything else in the band's bouncy, guitar-driven formula is kept intact. Reveling in a geeky fandom of all things rock 'n' roll, Sleater-Kinney's sound isn't so much inventive as it is well executed. "Dance Song '97" owes an obvious debt to early Cure records, while the title-track could be an Elastica b-side.

The tunes are almost catchy enough to mask the piqued, spare lyrics, which emote like feminist haikus. On "Little Babies," a "dum dum dee dee dee dum dum dee dum doo" '60's candy-girl chorus rubs up against the miffed lines: "I'm the water I'm the dishes I'm the soap / I will comfort make you clean help you cope." Not that Tucker never struts or cracks a smile: On "Heart Factor," she beams, "I think we found a way to put the fun back in sin," while she implores listeners to "shake it baby / a little more" on "It's Enough."

Too sophisticated musically to qualify as a riot grrl record, Dig Me Out, like the album's fourth song goes, gives you "All the drama you've been craving" and then some.

--- Stephen Head

(Sleater-Kinney will play the Tokyo Rose in Charlottesville on May 20th w/ Mark Robinson & Cold Cold Hearts)