Notes From the Underground By Mark Jenkins Special to The Washington Post Wednesday, March 3, 1999

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Sleater-Kinney

On 1997's "Dig Me Out," Sleater-Kinney's third album, the Portland-Olympia trio gave its jittery post-punk style the benefit of funkier rhythms and even a few nonsense syllables; when singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein sang "dum-dum-diddy," they connected to a rock-and-roll tradition far more venerable – and engagingly playful – than the bisexual, feminist protest music of their previous riot-grrrl bands, Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17.

There's less of such friskiness, however, on the new "The Hot Rock" (Kill Rock Stars), an album that seems oppressed by the weight of a failed romance.

Whether expressing joy, sorrow or rage, Sleater-Kinney is always galvanizing. The way Tucker and Brownstein's voices thrust and parry is simply one of the most dynamic things in contemporary pop music, and when they come together at the end of "Get Up" to proclaim the title, the effect is ecstatic.

Equally characteristic of the album, however, are songs like "The Size of Our Love," which enlists melancholy violin and viola to lament, "Our love is the size of/ These tumors inside us."

Similar post-mortems are transformed into something less morbid by such exuberant tracks as "Burn Don't Freeze!"

The latter is no less afflicted by true love – "You come between me and the darkness/ Please don't ever leave" – but that doesn't prevent Tucker from defiantly expressing the essential Sleater-Kinney maxim: "I'm the one who decides who I am."

Built to Spill

If Sleater-Kinney's sharp guitar and vocal retorts are sonically pointillistic, Built to Spill's style is more abstract expressionist. The 10 songs on the Boise-Olympia trio's new "Keep It Like a Secret" (Warner Bros.) are pithier than those on 1997's "Perfect From Now On," but they still feature free-flowing structures and thick textures. While Built to Spill and Sleater-Kinney travel in the same circles – "Keep It Like a Secret" guest keyboardist Sam Coomes plays in Quasi with Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss – their methods are quite different. Built to Spill singer-guitarist Doug Martsch fragments traditional rock song structure, so that verses lead unexpectedly into long instrumental forays, or caustic guitar solos yield surprisingly to tuneful choruses. The musical raw materials won't surprise folk-rock fans, who will likely recognize Martsch's affinity for Neil Young in both his guitar playing and his high tenor. Still, the juxtapositions of songs like "The Plan," which opens the album as if the "pause" button had just been deactivated, toy elegantly with formal expectations. "Who doesn't think they're at the center of the universe?" asks Martsch, but in his songs the universe is elastic and its center is forever slip-sliding beguilingly away.

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