In a Shiny Venue, Sleater-Kinney Tears It Up

The women of Sleater-Kinney are not trying to be discovered. They seem thrilled enough with their place in the indie-rock underground, as dependable heroes in their own punk-rock world, bringing springy buzz tones and furious combat rock to fans ready to listen. No Gap ads in Sleater-Kinney’s future.

“You guys are rowdy, that’s good,” singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein said from the stage at the Highlands on Wednesday, the first of two nights at the Hollywood venue.

The sound was a bit muddy at the club, where the show was moved because of structural damage at the scheduled site, the El Rey Theatre. But nothing could quite dilute the trio’s 90 minutes of furious wailing and venting and praising, in songs of sexual politics and a world once again at war.

When Brownstein asked if anyone in the crowd had been at this polished nightclub before, not a single hand was raised. Singer-guitarist Corin Tucker joked, “This is a step up for us. We’re playing parking lots in Arizona.”

Where they played hardly mattered. At its most explosive, the dual guitars (set against the sharp, edgy beat of drummer Janet Weiss) frequently coalesced into pure, uncompromising pop-rock-punk. Many of the night’s best moments were drawn from 2000’s high-energy “All Hands on the Bad One,” an album possibly overlooked only because the previous three had attracted such praise.

The band’s newest album, “One Beat,” falls a bit short of those heights, but only a bit, with indie-rock hooks less fanciful but equally charged with intense harmonies and raw punk passages. By the time Sleater-Kinney got to an astute version of the B-52’s song “Private Idaho,” the music was spare and joyous, and as popular as they want it to be.