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“Modern Girl” – Sleater-Kinney
(Words/music: Sleater-Kinney, available on The Woods, Sub Pop 2005)

The first time I heard “Modern Girl,” I thought the CD was defective.  About halfway through the song, the sound became distorted and garbled, and even though the CD was brand new, I assumed that I must have scratched it or received a copy with a manufacturing defect.  I went through all the steps – found another copy of the album , played both on a different CD player, and even found a torrent labeled “vinyl rip” – and every time, “Modern Girl” devolved from the cleanly looping guitar riff to the sound of an overloaded speaker.  Maybe it was the big deal made about the album’s circumstances, particularly the band working with Flaming Lips’ producer Dave Fridmann for their Sub Pop debut, but the idea that this was intentional didn’t cross my mind.

Needless to say, I felt foolish soon afterward.  Not only is it intentional, but it undercuts the song simple melody the same way Carrie Brownstein’s verses undercut her chorus.  “My whole life / look liked a picture of a sunny day,” she sings, yet the rest of the song juxtaposes declarations of happiness with feelings of alienation, frustration, and anger.  At Coachella in 2006, Brownstein described the song as “about a nervous breakdown in reverse,” and whether it’s a scene played in rewind or simply a relapse into a dark spot, the narrator spirals from contentment to despair, grasping onto memories of a happier time.  Similarly, the arrangement follows suit, starting with that looped riff and sing-song melody only to watch the faders creep up and the distortion set in.  By the end, it sounds the way Brownstein’s narrator feels – foggy, disjoined, and only vaguely remembering what it was like at the beginning.  The song goes deeper than this downward spiral – for instance, it’s up for debate whether the protagonist is “happy” because she’s clueless or because she’s genuinely happy at the beginning – but even these possibilities didn’t become visible to me until I realized that the track was “broken” by design.

More on Sleater-Kinney: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm