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Review: Reunited Sleater-Kinney at Union Transfer

Desperately loved bands break up and get back together all the time. What's rare is when they come back at full strength, returning not only with skills intact and wisdom gained, but also with the sense of urgency that made them so desperately loved in the first place.

Desperately loved bands break up and get back together all the time. What's rare is when they come back at full strength, returning not only with skills intact and wisdom gained, but also with the sense of urgency that made them so desperately loved in the first place.

Such is the case with Sleater-Kinney, the glorious three-piece band of singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss, who played a bristling-with-energy show at Union Transfer on Saturday night. They're back on the road after going separate ways after their 2005 album, The Woods.

All three pursued rewarding projects in the interim. Tucker made two albums with an eponymous band while raising a family, Weiss played in the indie pop duo Quasi, as well as with Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks and Wild Flag. Brownstein was one of the principals in that band, while also going on to comedic glory with Fred Armisen in the satirical cable series Portlandia.

But the dynamic new No Cities to Love - so far, 2015's best album - clearly demonstrates there's no substitute for the alchemy the trio achieves in one another's company. That was abundantly clear on stage at Union Transfer, which sold out instantly after the band's reunion announcement in October.

With "Price Tag," the working-class heroine salvo that leads off No Cities, the elements that distinguish the band were immediately on display.

Weiss' rugged, rumbling drumming more than compensates for the absence of a bass player. (Touring member Katie Harkin of British band Sky Larkin joined the trio on guitar and keyboards on some tracks.) Brownstein's inventive, rocked-out riffs drive the songs, and her spoken-sung vocals overlap with Tucker's in a back-and-forth that plays like an interior conversation of one restless mind. And Tucker's clarion-call voice made clear this band is expert at freighting every moment with meaning. "We never really checked, we never checked the price tag," she sang. "When the cost comes in, it's gonna be high."

The highly efficient 23-song, 90-minute set gathered momentum as it moved briskly along, including all but one (the quiet "Fade") of No Cities' 10 tracks. In their first decade, Sleater-Kinney was known for performing classic-rock covers, but this time the heritage they explored was their own in an all-original set. Digging into a rich back catalog, they pulled the shimmy shake of "Oh!," hard-edged crunch of "Light Rail Coyote," and slowly building "Sympathy" off 2002's One Beat.

But as captivating as the old songs were, what makes the reunion special is the new ones, best exemplified by "Surface Envy," the let's-get-back-to-work battle cry from No Cities with which the group really found its gear five songs in, as Tucker sang at the top of her voice, "We win, we lose, only together do we break the rules."