Never Break the Chain

A little earlier this week, Sleater-Kinney announced that they were going on "indefinite hiatus," meaning that their most recent album will almost certainly be their last.

I'd like to think that the band waited to make their announcement until after I'd made The Woods' position on my Top Ten list official, but I'm pretty certain that they had made this decision some time ago. As I mentioned in my previous write-up, the creation of the album was very intense, and how they would be able to follow it up was an open question. I'd actually thought that they might record one more album after The Woods, but I also thought that such an album would either be a carbon-copy of the last, a step back, or a reaction against it that would be radically different. And I believed that would have been the end.

What I find curious is not the reason behind the decision (which, by the way, I'm extrapolating based only on press clippings I've read over the past year) but it's timing. The band is in the midst of a tour that will last until mid-August and I doubt very much that they made the announcement in order to increase ticket sales to their remaining shows (although their one date in NYC subsequently sold out). Perhaps it was simply because they didn't want to have to live with the decision anymore, that the pressure of being the only ones to know was too much to carry with everything else that comes with touring.

In any case, it's a shame and they will be missed--at least in this corner of the 'blogosphere.