Sleater-Kinney: Dig Me Out [SUB POP]

Why you'll love it

Sub Pop's remastered reissue comes with a lyric sheet and a download code. Dig Me Out is widely seen as the band's breakthrough, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 189 on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This edition

• Remastered
• Lyric sheet
• Download card included

About the album

Call it the moment the trio clicked. Janet Weiss, previously of Quasi, joined Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein behind the kit for this third album, and she stayed long enough to become the band's longest-serving drummer. They moved to Kill Rock Stars, reunited with producer John Goodmanson, and recorded at John and Stu's Place in Seattle over December 1996 and January 1997.

The songs draw on straight-ahead rock and roll, with Tucker's and Brownstein's guitars weaving tight knots around each other and Weiss driving everything forward. The title track bursts out of the gate, "One More Hour" is a raw, beautiful breakup song, "Little Babies" bounces with handclap energy, and "Words and Guitar" is a love letter to the music itself. "Turn It On" and "Heart Factory" crackle, "Jenny" closes on a tender note, and the lyrics deal with heartbreak and survival without blinking.

Critics praised its energy and its feminist bite, and the title track reached No. 6 on Seattle's KEXP album chart without ever being a single. The sleeve tips its hat to The Kinks' The Kink Kontroversy, so in a sense this record has been borrowing from the classics section since before it was in it.

Also at Kops: more Sleater-Kinney on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Kill Rock Stars / Sub Pop (cat# SP 1105), a reissue of the 1997 album.