Last December, after unexpectedly losing my job as News Editor of Wondering Sound, I made the decision to leave Brooklyn and move to Seattle, which meant leaving the music industry as well. I made many hyperbolic declarations to friends that it had broken my heart too many times. On February 26, two days before I left, I headed to Terminal 5 to see my last show in New York City. It also happened to be my first time seeing Sleater-Kinney. I thought it was poignant—my final band in NYC being from the part of the country where I was going to start a new life—a paradoxical ending and beginning. I was reading into the situation, looking for some sort of sign that a cross-country move was my destiny.

But I attended the show under bittersweet circumstances. I’d been researching Sleater-Kinney prior to getting laid-off. They were going to be the next focus of my column “Playing Catch-Up”—a place where I’d dive into various artists’ catalogues and write about my personal experience getting to know the music. Although I’d been vaguely aware of Sleater-Kinney in college, I didn’t listen to the group in earnest until I moved to New York City in 2006; they had released The Woods a year prior and just finished the tour that concluded in a 10-year hiatus. I’ve always wished I could hand deliver Sleater-Kinney to my 14-year-old self. Their feminist principles would have blown her tiny mind, and maybe even provided a road map of sorts for the fumbling little dork who wasn’t sold on the idea of being a nice girl.

The first time I heard “Bury Our Friends” I was sitting in an office with my old coworkers. My colleague Claire had received the Start Together box set ahead of time, Shazam’d the 7” marked “1/20/15,” and discovered the album cover for No Cities to Love. Wondering Sound broke the news of the new Sleater-Kinney album later that afternoon. For a new music site gaining momentum, this was a huge coup. I remembered that day while I stood in Terminal 5, waiting for the band to make their entrance. All the plans I’d made when I scheduled the concert no longer existed. I’d be getting on a plane in less than a week.

What I remember from that show is not Sleater-Kinney. Mostly, I recall my own frustration. Terminal 5 is traditionally a terrible venue, but it was even worse that night as a wide range of age groups tried to negotiate for space. Younger fans, who'd just been turned on to the band, wanted to mosh. Older fans, who clearly felt their longevity and nostalgia deserved respect, wanted to sip their beers and watch. It was a clusterfuck of mixed intentions. Everyone was being rude and I did not belong anywhere. Not with the young fans and their fresh enthusiasm. Not with the older fans and their memories of tours gone by. I felt somewhere in-between everyone in a city I no longer really lived in.

Carrie Brownstein’s ever-growing fame was also in full effect; her television stardom drew out almost every single celebrity in the five boroughs. I watched Claire Danes try to make out with her bored-looking husband Hugh Dancy while Gaby Hoffman dangled from the railing, and Jenna Lyons surveyed the scene in a sparkly blazer. An ever-present Fred Armisen seemed to be escorting every female cast member of Saturday Night Live. There were at least two actresses from Orange Is the New Black, plus an actor from The Walking Dead for good measure. I stood there, trying to focus on the music, unable to stop my eyes from drifting over to the shiny, famous people, and hating myself for recognizing them.

It was a show I should have enjoyed, but I couldn’t. New York was a city I loved, but I’d grown so weary of trying to glimpse a concert through the glowing barrage of cell phone screens, working 12-hour days only to have jobs disappear overnight, starting afresh with each new piece—feeding the new media monster that growls you’re only as relevant as your next byline. I’d hacked it out for almost nine years and given it a fair shake. I even convinced myself on occasion that there was no other way to live. But with each morning I was pushed off the L train and thrown into the foot traffic of Union Square, for every seven-foot tall bro who stood directly in front of me at a show, I became more convinced it was time for me to leave.

My escape fantasy went like this: I would go to Seattle and work a 9-to-5 job. I’d leave music writing behind. I wouldn’t think of work once I left for the day. Weekends would be blissful stretches of free time in a city where I could take a 30-minute bus ride to the middle of the actual woods, not manicured park lawns. I’d discover if I could inhabit a West Coast lifestyle without submitting to the endless traffic of LA, the real estate market of San Francisco, or the laziness of Portland. (Seriously, what do people do in Portland?)

Last week, I accepted the position of Music Editor at The Stranger, so my plan to come to Seattle and live the life of a normal didn’t quite work out as I’d envisioned. Last night, less than three months after the bummer at Terminal 5, I found myself at the Showbox, a very different club in a very different city, for a very different show by—who else?—Sleater-Kinney.

Straight away, the energy was very different from what I’d experienced at Terminal 5. Corin Tucker kept fumbling the opening guitar notes of “Price Tag,” prompting feigned exasperation from Brownstein and a spontaneous drum solo from Janet Weiss. The audience laughed, the band members chuckled, and I relaxed into an atmosphere more playful and less polished than it had been in New York. And I felt grateful to be in a respectful audience because I was able to focus. It was clear to me that the band felt more at home here at the Showbox than they had in the cavernous space of bad acoustics that haunts Terminal 5. So was I.

Audience members checked in with one another, nodding their approval, declaring their love for specific songs, and the thrill of seeing their beloved band again after all these years. I witnessed no such banter back in New York. The woman next to me saw I was scribbling a bunch of notes and said, “Are you writing down all the songs? That’s so cool!” At one point, Emily grabbed my arm and screamed, “MORE GUITAR SOLOS!” I had no other response but to plaster a grin miles wide across my face. I wasn’t part of Seattle yet, but I felt welcome.

Then, of course, there was the band.

Weiss tends to fly a bit under the radar when it comes to media attention, but I found her to be the most riveting member on stage. The tips of her hair flew throughout the set, coming to rest when she sang along with the “dum-dum-ditty-dee”s on the chorus of “Little Babies.” She played the cowbell on the intro of “Sympathy” and then threw it down onto the stage. She hoisted her drumsticks, clenched in one fist, into the air. Weiss is the embodiment of rock’n’roll aesthetic that we all want to possess and is frequently mimicked—by fashion, by pop groups, by corporate project managers who call each other rock stars for getting their quarterly performance reviews filed on schedule—but can never truly be copied. You’ve either got it, or you don’t. Weiss has it. Seeing her sing and play “You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun” will always be a significant Seattle memory.

Brownstein remains the most dramatic player, guitar often aloft over her head, feeding off the crowd, jumping and kicking, and knocking over her mic stand later in the show. Her stage presence deploys all the classic benchmarks of rock, but effortlessly subverts the rockist signifiers, letting you know these moves are not just for the boys. She is the passionate action to Weiss’s laid-back cool.

Also, while we often focus on Tucker’s plaintive howls, Brownstein is not to be outdone on the vocal front. Tucker’s powerhouse pipes shone through when she flung a high-pitched scream at the crowd during “The Fox,” but Brownstein returned to growl and yell, “Where’s the ‘fuck you?’” during “Entertain.” They never look at each other when they’re singing, but often meet in the middle of the stage to face one another, play, and smile. The word “trust” kept popping into my mind as I watched them perform “Jumpers.” Tucker also fell to the ground during the encore of “Gimme Love,” proving Brownstein wasn’t the only one with moves. It’s an automatic move to bounce Tucker and Brownstein off one another, attempting to make a checklist of their similarities and differences. However, in truth I might as well compare my iPod to my headphones. They serve different functions, but I need one to use the other.

Everyone in Seattle keeps asking me, “How are you liking it here?” and my answer always seems to disappoint. “It’s different,” I keep replying. But it is. No one I know or meet here ever knew me in Brooklyn. I am without context. I rush to reassure and claim I’m not comparing it to New York, even though that’s a lie. Of course I am comparing. How could I not? I compare the two cities the same way I keep comparing the two Sleater-Kinney shows. I needed both concerts to help me develop my opinion of the band, to help fill in the details and experiences I missed out by discovering them later on in life, instead of as a teenager. So, can I rate one show better than the other? I appreciated last night’s concert much more than what I saw in New York, but Terminal 5 is what allowed me to feel grateful. Perhaps it’s more apt to say that I’m using Sleater-Kinney as a life raft right now. I’m using them as an example of how I need both my cities, old and new, as well. They’re wildly diverse, but the experience of one has been unduly influenced by the other. Can one city really be better or worse? No, but also… yes. Only together.