Sleater-Kinney w/ Lizzo at First Avenue, Minneapolis (14 Feb 2015)

Sleater-Kinney Setlist

1. Price Tag
2. Oh!
3. Fangless
4. Start Together
5. What’s Mine Is Yours
6. Ironclad
7. No Anthems
8. Get Up
9. Youth Decay
10. No Cities to Love
11. A New Wave
12. One Beat
13. Surface Envy
14. Words and Guitar
15. Bury Our Friends
16. Good Things
17. Entertain
18. Jumpers
    — Encore —
19. Gimme Love
20. Little Babies
21. Call the Doctor
22. Modern Girl
23. One More Hour

Tour Dates

What a special night, not only was the show complete sold out, but for one night only, making their only appearance on this No Cities to Love tour, were Grrrl Prty presents Tawst. As you know Lizzo is from here and her ex-band and friends Grrrl Prty were still in town… that it shouldn’t surprise anyone at this special DJ/dance intro. Their DJ set included a variety of Riot Grrrl anthems, such as The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb”, Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon”, Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl”, Gossip’s “Standing In The Way Of Control”, among others. They played to the audience, who knew all the songs.

Lizzo stepped on stage a little after 9pm in seamless transition to her set. With the help of drummer Ryan McMahon and Sophia Eris, she played for about 40 minutes – including a couple of “new song alerts”. The new songs, as noted by Lizzo, are much more personal to her, especially when hearing her sing how you can’t wash away her brown skin (with the entire First Avenue audience holding up their cellphone’s camera light).

That wasn’t all, for “Batches & Cookies”, a special appearance by Babes in Toyland’s drummer Lori Barbero, who flew in from Los Angeles at Babe’s reunion show to be in Minneapolis for last night, was on stage to toss out cookies to the crowd.

Just prior to Sleater-Kinney taking the stage, Jade, DJ from The Current, came on stage to thanked us for attending and to remind us that the Current was sponsoring the show.

As expected, SK mostly played songs from their latest record, No Cities to Love (Sub Pop). I’ve seen SK three other times (2000, 2002, and 2005) and they’ve always played First Avenue. This fact was mentioned by Carrie Brownstein who said, “Perhaps it’s true that we never place a place as much as First Ave…” then quickly followed by “Don’t quote me on that though!” She could be right, including a cancelled date and last night’s date, SK booked First Avenue at least 6 times.

Of all the cities to love, Minneapolis held a special place in SK’s hearts. As Brownstein mentioned how proud she was that First Avenue was celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, she also mentioned how she’ll missed David Carr (originally from Minnesota) since he recently passed away, right before the band started to play the title track “No Cities to Love” to their album.

With the very minor exception of a guitar difficulty right before “Ironclad”, the guitar tech fixed it right away by swapping out for backup guitar… otherwise the band were in tip-top shape. Both Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, who traded lead vocals, sounded really good. For this tour, the band also featured touring guitarist Katie Harkin, who also did some additional percussions when needed.

The encore started with Tucker coming on stage to announce that Planned Parenthood were at all their shows. They started on their epic five-song encore with “Gimme Love” featuring a rare guitar-less Tucker… touring guitarist Harkin took over the bass.

I also wanted to mention that this wasn’t just a SK reunion, but a reunion for all their fans. Personally speaking, I saw old friends I have not seen in nine years and it was all because SK came back to the music scene… so from the bottom of my heart, thank you Sleater-Kinney.

Sleater-Kinney’s No Cities to Love album is out now on Sub Pop.