Hard-Driving Sleater-Kinney Is Rough and Ready to Rule

“I wanna be your Joey Ramone,” Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker sings in the song of the same name, an imprecation not to join the boys’ punk club, but to lay claim to some of that veteran provocateur’s rough-edged swagger.

A female trio that hatched in Olympia, Wash.’s fertile indie-rock scene, Sleater-Kinney, which sold out two shows at the El Rey Theatre this week, is currently making a strong case for being, as Tucker sings in “Joey Ramone,” the queens of rock ‘n’ roll.

With an arsenal of great riffs in its gun belt and an attack that’s equal parts Wire, Bikini Kill and Yoko Ono, Sleater-Kinney is one of a handful of bands that’s keeping rock’s pulse racing.

At the El Ray on Tuesday, Sleater-Kinney was received like conquering heroes, and they kept their part of the bargain. Each band member played a distinct role in creating Sleater-Kinney’s tight, cubist song mosaics.

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein provided busy, sinewy lines that snaked around the choppy melodies; Janet Weiss, one of the most inventive drummers in rock, laid down elemental rhythms and stormy fills, while Tucker wailed and howled in impossibly high registers, her fluttery vibrato cutting through the band’s most high-decibel moments. It was a thrilling mix, and a testament to this band’s implacable raw power as a live act.