The Corin Tucker Band: 1,000 Years

Label: Kill Rock Stars

This blessed record is everything you'd want and more from the former (and probably, once again) Sleater-Kinney principal. On her first sort-of solo album, Corin Tucker shows that even the most accomplished artists can continue to grow, amaze, reach incredible things that could not have been imagined. 1,000 Years is cool, calm, tense, modestly ambitious and strikingly minimal, Tucker's voice less pushed and more overtly songful than in S-K but hardly restrained. Her band is a power trio and these secret, stealthy, full-hearted songs are rock songs: "Doubt" explodes in guitar fury (Tucker's six-string compadre here, Seth Lorinczi, played in Circus Lupus) but still stops to take a deep breath in the middle and let the waves crash. Without feeling like less than a sum of parts, 1,000 Years moves through a spectrum of emotions and musical range from song to song: pleading ("Dragon"); upbeat, nimble and muscular ("Riley"); haunting, breezy and acoustic ("It's Always Summer"), on and on. So many of the songs contend with the past without slumming in nostalgia or sentimentality; you'd think many were about S-K if not for the fact of that group's peaceful hiatus. Regardless, one listen to this album and you'll always want Tucker to continue on in this mode as well. (M.L. Thrope)