Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker speaks to MOJO about the tragedy and grief behind the group’s new album, Little Rope.
Having formed in Olympia, Washington in 1994, Sleater-Kinney’s decade long evolution from the crucible of riot grrrl to alt-rock pre-eminence appeared to come to a conclusion with their 2005 album The Woods. Although no farewell was ever announced, the band’s hibernation lasted for another ten years. The band are now four albums into a reunion that began with 2015’s comeback No Cities To Love and reduced to a two-piece following the departure of drummer Janet Weiss in 2019.
Out later this week, eleventh album Little Rope was largely written when Carrie Brownstein’s mother and stepfather were tragically killed in a car accident while on holiday in Italy in 2022 and loss and grief inevitably shifted the ground beneath the recording. “It changed the temperature of everything we were doing,” Corin Tucker tells MOJO, while Brownstein has spoken about the band being a place of solace and taking comfort in their fundamental sound and finding shelter in her bandmate’s voice. Ahead of Little Rope’s release, Tucker speaks to MOJO’s Victoria Segal about tragedy, grief and the simple joy of caring for dogs.
The title Little Rope comes from the song Small Finds (“give me a little rope”). What does it mean to you?
“We wanted a title that had duality to it. There’s the idea of rope as a lifeline to pull yourselves out of a terrible situation. A leash that you suddenly can break free of or can just get some slack on. Or yeah, it can be used to bring about your final moments. I think that’s in some ways where we are as a people. We have a lot of pretty intense crossroads that we’re at.”
Carrie [Brownstein] has said while she was grieving, she needed you to sing, needed to hear your voice. Did that feel like a big responsibility?
“No, I was happy to do it. It was really hard to watch one of my best friends suffering. You know, singing is what really comes naturally to me, so it was not hard for me to do it. It was just that the tragedy and the grief, it changed the temperature of everything that we were doing. It was a very intense, charged atmosphere. Say It Like You Mean It – when I came into the studio and sang the original melody, John [Congleton, producer] was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think this is strong enough.’ Of course, I was, like, really mad! I went home that day and woke up in the middle of the night and I had this other melody in my head that went to a more intense place. John was like, ‘Yes, OK. Start there.’ It was a more potent melody that got not just sadness, but also a ferocity of grief and of anger that, I think, matched the other songs as well. But Hunt You Down, that song wasn’t finished until the second round of recording, and so that song was definitely about Carrie’s grief. And that was the one that I found the most devastating listening to while we were finishing the album.”
You and Carrie produced 2021’s Path Of Wellness why work with John Congleton on Little Rope?
“We really had wanted to work with John for a long time and we had aspirations to combine some stronger synth aspects with guitars in a way we thought he would be really good at. He was a really good match for us because he comes from kind of the same community we do – he was in this band The Paper Chase that was on Kill Rock Stars and we were on the same label for a while. He thinks the same as we do about the studio – we like to be ready, not to languish because I think that can kill the fire in a song.”
Dogs feature quite strongly in the lyrics.
“We are total rescue dog people. It’s such a cliché about Portland, but it’s true. The dogs have better lives than the people there. The larger problems are so much thornier and so much more entrenched and difficult for us to solve, but rescuing an animal and taking care of a dog is a very simple joy.”
So what dog do you have?
“I personally have a dog named Champ. He’s such a cutie. He’s a very handsome dog. He’s like the Brad Pitt of dogs. But he has a terrible habit – he’s terrified of other dogs, but he’s very aggressive. So he’s a total handful. And he’s on, like, 20 milligrams of Prozac a day. He’s gorgeous.”
Little Rope is out January 19 on Loma Vista. Pre-order/buy: Amazon/Rough Trade