Sleater-Kinney 'grapple with a sense of complacency' and grief on new album
Download mp3 (7.33 MB)The band Sleater-Kinney grew out of the riot grrrl movement in the early '90s and is now an indie rock staple. Their 1997 album “Dig Me Out” is on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein — both on vocals and guitar — kept a strong bond through an eight year hiatus and the departure of their drummer in 2019. In January, they released their eleventh studio album: "Little Rope." They’re performing Friday, March 1, in Tempe.
Full interview
AMBER VICTORIA SINGER: The name "Little Rope," according to Brownstein, has a few different meanings.
CARRIE BROWNSTEIN: To us, "Little Rope" could be your darkest, most desperate moment, wanting to end it all, reaching for that rope. Or the counter to that, of course, is that it’s what someone throws you to pull you out of that same muck. Or it’s what binds us together, makes us feel connected.
SINGER: The phrase comes up in the song "Small Finds."
[SONG] Is it food or garbage? / It smells good enough/ Can you gimme a little rope? Come on, gimme some / teeth that bite like candy spikes / gnaw away the pain …
SINGER: In the midst of working on their newest album, tragedy struck. Brownstein’s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident.
BROWNSTEIN: Loss is very destabilizing, so I think guitar was something I could almost meditate upon because I knew what the language of it was at a time when the words weren’t really coming to me.
SINGER: Although much of the emotion in "Little Rope" is shaped by Brownstein’s grief, Tucker does a lot of the singing.
BROWNSTEIN: I think because I felt rendered so incoherent with grief, I turned to Corin as the singer, and sort of … needed her to convey the monstrosity, the transcendence, all of the big things because I felt small, and I knew that guitar was going to be the way that I expressed myself, or songwriting, or arranging.
SINGER: Brownstein and Tucker have been making music together for decades. This isn’t the first Sleater-Kinney album that feels deeply personal.
BROWNSTEIN: I don’t have another partnership that’s lasted 30 years, so all I can say is that it’s a little bit surreal. ... One constant is that we allow each other a vulnerability and a fearlessness. I think we feel ultimately safe around one another. It’s very vulnerable to sit in front of another person and play guitar and sing a song that you’re just working on.
SINGER: "Little Rope" opens with a song called "Hell."
BROWNSTEIN: I suppose that’s a bold title for an opening track.
[SONG] Hell don’t make no fuss / Hell is desperation / And a young man with a gun / You ask / why like there’s no tomorrow / You ask / why like there’s no tomorrow. [instrumental fade under CB explaining]
BROWNSTEIN: I think one of the ideas was to kind of grapple with a sense of complacency, not just political apathy or acquiescence … the reality is that chaos is sort of right outside the door.
SINGER: Another song on the album is called "Dress Yourself."
[SONG] Get up girl and dress yourself / in clothes you love for a world you hate / stand up straight and comb your hair / a style you’re told looks half-deranged
BROWNSTEIN: That to me is just trying to meet the present moment and the paradox almost of life right now where despite everything that’s happening in the world, somehow we still have to perform the task of being human and presentable on a daily basis.
