The Corin Tucker Band

• 1,000 Years [Kill Rock Stars, 2010] A
• Kill My Blues [Kill Rock Stars, 2012] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

1,000 Years [Kill Rock Stars, 2010]
A deep, pained, sober, subtle album about a marriage in the throes of geographical separation--and then families out of money, lives out of gas, pasts out of reach. Throughout, guitarist-etc. Seth Lorinczi provides the right shades of darkness--sometimes enticing, sometimes engulfing--as Sleater-Kinney fans long for a bright and cleansing breakout. They get one as "Handed Love" goes out, when Corin shouts her desperation and rips off a riff, then tops the outburst with the even more rousing "Doubt." That's where first-timers will enter the record. Only later will they ask themselves just how rousing doubt can or should be--or so I hope, as does Tucker. A

Kill My Blues [Kill Rock Stars, 2012]
After the feminist scolding cum rallying cry, my favorites are the happy love songs, every one about a marriage that has no time for the fantasy that wedlock is boring and may even wish it was sometimes: a health scare, an emotional rupture, a vacation they need every mile and minute of. Mourning Joey Ramone and clearing emotional space for her infant daughter, she's slightly slower and considerably more melodramatic, as is only appropriate. Other times the melodrama appears merely the organic outcome of a larger-than-life voice. A-