The last time Sleater-Kinney put out an album, there was an almighty to-do – at least, in the febrile world of progressive indie rock. The Center Won’t Hold (2019) boasted a new producer – Annie “St Vincent” Clark – and a sleeker, more gleaming approach to the band’s twin-guitar post-punk.

Somehow – accounts differ – Sleater-Kinney’s revised working methods didn’t suit long-time drummer Janet Weiss, who left after recording was completed: a familiar, age-old rock’n’roll story given a sour aftertaste by the reputation Sleater-Kinney have accrued over 27 years as a female-positive sisterhood. A fan backlash ensued, to the extent that the search term “St Vincent broke up Sleater-Kinney” still pops up when you Google them.

This 10th Sleater-Kinney album is singing guitarists Carrie Brownstein’s and Corin Tucker’s first as a duo since the band’s very beginnings. All the drama around The Center Won’t Hold has since been superseded – by the pandemic, by the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Portland, Oregon (where they’re based), and by the wildfires that burned in the Oregon hills last summer.

As titles go, Path of Wellness seems both sincere – and arch. “Drain me of my toxins, drain me of the life I lead,” sing Brownstein and Tucker on the title track, “But can you ever rid me of my human frailty.” The song clatters in, its unsettled post-punk very much recalling the band’s foundational spirit. On one level, it’s just like old times, with the Lennon and McCartney of the guitar underground strutting their off-kilter stuff. Annie Clark is gone – though not far, she and Brownstein have worked together on a forthcoming mockumentary biopic, The Nowhere Inn. But these 11 songs were all written and entirely self-produced by Brownstein and Tucker; a couple of drummers and a handful of local Portland musicians provide daubs of additional instrumentation. Just two abstracted figures grace the album’s cover, rendered by Portland artist Samantha Wall: Sleater-Kinney has been whittled back to its core.

And yet, Path of Wellness is no back-to-basics, hairshirt exercise in DIY. Sleater-Kinney have never been averse to tunes; they have a classic rock streak a mile wide and the experience to push faders as they see fit. And so the big singalong chorus to Worry With You – the album’s lead single – comes out punching, all for being with the one you love in dark times. “Let’s get lost, baby, and take a wrong turn,” sing Tucker and Brownstein, doubling down on joy and courage. Of course, Brownstein’s probing psychedelic guitar ensures this is no conventional song.

Starting as a glowering rock song, High in the Grass once again showcases how this inventive band can pull off sleights of hand. Tucker’s vocals are airy and elegant, recalling any number of pure-voiced folkies; the message is to seize the day. “We leave before the gig is done,” she notes.

But ironically for an album made in 2020, the record stumbles most when it tries to deal head-on with the times of its making. Shadow Town most obviously reflects its Portland backdrop, with chaos in the streets and smoke coming off the hills. For all Tucker reaffirms the need for love in extremis, the song itself lumbers along uncertainly, failing to catch light.

It’s hard to disagree with the sentiments the band voice on the album’s closing track, Bring Mercy. But it meets the moment with platitudes and a sluggish pace, a grand exit that stalls well short of the rallying anthemics of which this band are more than capable.

The Path of Wellness is best when Sleater-Kinney muster anger, humour and playfulness – all qualities their last album had in spades, incidentally. Complex Female Characters sneers at men who claim to appreciate female agency, but find it tiresome when women actually exercise that agency.

Even as they double down on the fundamentals, Sleater-Kinney have very much not lost their sense of freedom, nor the need to expand their brief. Accompanied by eloquent guitar ad-libs, Method finds Tucker channelling a little Chrissie Hynde and a lot of Patti Smith. “I’m not asking you to smile, you’re not a fucking child,” she talk-sings, “I’m just asking you to be with me.”

Whether all this is in response to the fan backlash, or due to pandemic force majeure is a moot point. In a recent interview Brownstein called out the binary thinking of fans unable to let a band change. “I find it really interesting that the same people who reject conservatism [in politics] will insist upon a very orthodox view of this band,” she said, “that people who rail against binary oppositions on all fronts will settle for reductive, fixed, black-and-white narratives of Sleater-Kinney through refusing to acknowledge nuance or multiple truths.”