#7 - Jenny - Sleater-Kinney

Heartbreak.  It's the basis for about 95% of all rock music.  I'm of the opinion that you haven't really lived (or loved) until you have had your heart broken.  It is easy to say this as a person who is happily married and very much in love.  But you can't really savour the good things unless you have experienced the bad.

Sleater-Kinney (were) a brilliant 3 piece female band from Washington State.  Very political, very feminist, very punk and an extremely talented band.  Dig me out was the first album of theirs I heard, after reading a bit about them in various magazines.  You know you are onto a winner when the album, fly's through and all you want to do is hit repeat.

At first I was drawn to first half of the album, until I started listening more intently to the second side, which is arguably the heartbreak side.  Especially the final four songs.  But it is Jenny that stands out the most to me.  Its a  harrowing song to listen to.

It was especially harrowing to listen two when someone has just put up the brick wall and called it quits.  The booming, drama filled music throughout and the repetition of the line "didn't we almost have it", still gets me.  Its an acknowledgement really that, while it was good, it is really over. And that is always the hardest part, admitting to yourself that it is truly over.  Songs can be really cathartic in that way, sometimes, like counselling, you need someone (even if it is a musician you have never met) to tell you that its over.

I didn't read until later that most of the songs on Dig me out are about the break-up of (band members) Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker's relationship.  The fact that they continued recording and touring as a band for a decade before finally calling quits is real commitment to the music.

This isn't the only song I associate with my own heartbreak.  There are many more still to come...

Jenny - Sleater-Kinney