Sleater-Kinney’s new album wastes no time situating the listener in a particularly fiery postcode. As opening track Hell switches from its haunted intro to full-on quaking distortion, Corin Tucker sings of young men brandishing guns, of looking into the mirror only to see ‘a stranger looking back’. The horrors of our present day alone warrants the decidedly unambiguous title, but it takes on an altogether different resonance when you factor in that Carrie Brownstein tragically lost both her mother and stepfather to a car crash midway through the album’s recording sessions. Little Rope is not always an easy listen, but it is a brilliant one. It would be wrong to call this a return to form, given that’s something S‑K have never lost. What is true, however, is that since...