Getting Into: Sleater-Kinney

How often have you said "I really think I would like that band, but I've never gotten into them"? Therein lies the inspiration for Getting Into, where I'll help start your education about a singer, band, or film director by telling you what albums or movies you'll need as a beginner, intermediate, and advanced fan. (Got ideas for Getting Into posts? Leave a comment or send me a private message.)

Today, I'm taking on Sleater-Kinney, the acclaimed band that transcended its riot grrrl roots to achieve wide recognition. The group went on indefinite hiatus in 2006, not long after releasing its most broadly embraced album, The Woods. Luckily, the band — guitarist/singers Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and, from 1997 on, drummer Janet Weiss — left behind a decade of strong recordings. Here's my guide to Getting Into Sleater-Kinney.

Beginner: Dig Me Out, The Hot Rock

If I were told I could only listen to two Sleater-Kinney albums for the rest of my life, these are the two I would pick. Dig Me Out, the band's 1997 album, marks the first time the elements of S-K's sound — overlapping vocals, thrashing guitars, wedge-in-your-head choruses — converge into a coherent whole; "One More Hour," the album's second track, is a pretty good indicator of whether you'll like Sleater-Kinney or not. The Hot Rock, released in 1999, is the natural extension of Dig Me Out, a more mature and somewhat more slickly produced recording that is arguably the band's greatest start-to-finish album.

For the intermediate and advanced selections, read more

Intermediate: The Woods, Call the Doctor, All Hands on the Bad One

Once you've gotten comfortable with Sleater-Kinney's style, it's time to go both backward and forward to hear where the band's sound came from and where it would ultimately wind up. Call the Doctor, from 1996, is less polished than Dig Me Out, showing more of the group's punk/garage band roots; it's worth owning if only for "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," a powerful, infectious staple of my high-school mixtapes. The Woods, the band's final album from 2005, finds Sleater-Kinney at its broadest and most experimental, with fuzzy guitars and a wide variety of song styles — but you'll hear the group's familiar, signature overlapping vocals here, too. All Hands on the Bad One, the group's 2000 release, boasts some good songs of its own, but it's most interesting as a transitional album, bridging the gap between the band's early sound and its final recordings.

Expert: Sleater-Kinney, One Beat, and the singles and live recordings

At the expert level, it's time to go way back — all the way to 1995, when the disbanding of two other riot grrrl groups (Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17) led to the rise of Sleater-Kinney. The band's self-titled first release is the group at its scrappiest and most raw, but "The Day I Went Away" is an almost eerie indicator of things to come. The electronica-tinged One Beat, from 2002, may be the group's poppiest album, and it's amazing to think of the evolution between that album and the fuzz-fest of The Woods. Wrap up your education with some of the group's singles; I'm partial to "Get Up," which has two B-sides from The Hot Rock era. Finally, check out this recording of the band's final live show; the sound quality isn't perfect, but the set list hits all the high points of Sleater-Kinney's decade-long career.