Live concert photography of Sleater-Kinney with Black Belt Eagle Scout at Brooklyn Steel last week.

Live Concert Photography: Sleater-Kinney with Black Belt Eagle Scout at Brooklyn Steel 3/13/24

Last week, I was at Brooklyn Steel to catch progressive feminist icons and critically applauded, alt rock/riot grrl legends Sleater-Kinney play career-spanning headlining set, which featured material from 1999’s The Hot Rock, which the band’s co-founders Corin Tucker (vocals, guitar) and Carrie Brownstein (guitar and vocals) joked was made “when they were five,” and their recently released twelfth album Little Rope.

As a live quintet roared and ripped hard, revealing a a band that was super tight yet loose in a way that can only come about through expert musicianship, grit, attention to craft, deep and abiding passion and hard-won and harder-earned wisdom. If they’re playing a show near you, they’re a must see y’all.

Black Belt Eagle Scout opened. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year, you’d probably recall that I caught the act led by their proud Coastal Salish frontperson Katherine Paul open for acclaimed singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin last year. Their Brooklyn Steel set seemed — to my ears, at least — to be indebted to early U2: Yearning. anthemic yet deeply personal, and at points, breathtakingly gorgeous. But the other night, they had much larger, harder-hitting riffs than what I remembered. Much of the set tackled important themes of the day, too. One song was dedicated to queer, trans and nonbinary Indigenous young people. And the set’s closing song was about genocide and colonialism, showing empathy and solitary to the Palestinian people, informed by the ugliness of American history.

Photos from an incredible night of music are below.