At what age does your feminist anger stop being qualified as “riot grrrl rage”? Kill My Blues,the Corin Tucker Band’s sophomore album, is being heralded as the former Sleater-Kinney bandleader’s default to her ’91 Olympia factory settings. This is a fantastic prospect surely stoking our 1990s nostalgia and wiping the weird taste of her previous album off our palates, but it doesn’t quite hold.

Tucker is now a grown-azz, 39-year-old woman, and on Kill My Blues she tackles topics that weren’t on her riot girl radar at 20: mortality, the joy of conception, how she could use a vacation. She is singing from the perspective of her life as the mother of two kids who’s maybe a little wistful for days when her life was a little more carefree and Joey Ramone was still above ground. Her rage is no more than that of any American who’s paying attention in 2012.