“Female” is not a genre. But rock is a genre where women are thriving in 2015.
Colleen Green, I Want To Grow Up
Colleen Green's second album is a quarter life crisis set to music, with her striving to live like a mature adult while insecurities and bad habits make that seem almost entirely impossible. She's great at writing instantly catchy alt-rock melodies, which is a good thing – the hooks make it easier to handle the dark, self-loathing introspection of songs like "Deeper Than Love" and "Things That Are Bad for Me."
Out on February 24th on Hardly Art.
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit
Australian songwriter Courtney Barnett has a gift for writing songs that find intense emotions in mundane situations – like, say, having a song start out with her singing about feeling too lazy to mow her lawn and having it climax with her cathartically shouting "I used to hate myself but now I think I'm alright!" Like Green, Barnett is writing songs about trying to grow into adulthood, but she's a lot more laid back and more likely to shrug off her angst or try to talk you down from thinking she's cool.
Out on March 24th on Mom+Pop.
Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love
Sleater-Kinney's first album in nearly a decade sounds just as vital and thrilling as anything the band made during their run of classic records in the late '90s and early '00s, but it's not a carbon copy of anything they made back then. No Cities to Love is a quick and brutal record, with the band blasting through 10 top-quality tracks in a half hour. The vocals by Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein are all raw nerve emotion, and the music hits with the urgency of a band who probably knew damn well how much the world needed them back in action as they recorded it.
Out now on Sub Pop.
Erase Errata, Lost Weekend
Sleater-Kinney isn't the only all-female punk trio who've returned from a long hiatus. Erase Errata's first record since their excellent 2006 album Night Life is a brief, powerful set of tunes that pushes the band's hyper-political and highly rhythmic post-punk style in a new direction. Singer and guitarist Jenny Hoyston's guitar chops have evolved quite a bit over the past decade, resulting in a surprising delicacy on some tracks, while others, like the quasi-industrial "Watch Your Language," approach the kind of harsh mechanical tones you'd find on a Rage Against the Machine or late period Wire album.
Out now on Under the Sun.
