Sleater-Kinney played a blistering July 25 set at WOW Hall, in a hometown tour stop for Kinney singer and guitarist Corin Tucker, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the band’s seminal 1996 album Call the Doctor. 

Throughout the set and the encore, Sleater-Kinney — led by Tucker and musician and actor Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia) — were as ferocious as ever, playing selections from throughout their career up to the present day. 

Sleater-Kinney’s longtime drummer Janet Weiss left in 2019, and the current lineup features Brownstein and Wagner trading vocals and guitar, along with supporting musicians, offering a fuller sound, no less informed by Pacific Northwest indie rock, punk, occasional ’90s-era slacker vibes, and an abundance of youthful energy. Their last studio album, Little Rope, came out in 2024.

Eugene band ExWife, with plenty of Sleater-Kinney in their DNA, opened the show. Tucker snarled and gnashed with as much passion as ever, and chatted between songs, reiterating the important part WOW Hall played in her life as a young South Eugene High School student. 

At the same time, Brownstein kicked, sang like Patti Smith, windmilled like Peter Townsend, and blew the roof off the place. 

One surprise highlight of the evening:  the band covered Elastica’s 1995 “Connection” in the encore. 

It was a busy night in Eugene — country rock and soul superstars Alabama Shakes and Zach Bryan played a packed Autzen that night — but the Sleater-Kinney fans turned out for what was a rare opportunity to see a band of this stature at a venue as intimate — and to hear Tucker tell it, and as the band proved through their performance — as special as WOW Hall.