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DiS' Natalie Moore delves into conversation with Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney on being veterans, politics, commerciality in music and its the ‘deadening and watering down’. Gentle words then...
The new album is really surprising – when I first put it on I was blown away by how heavy it was. There’s also some really trippy stuff in there too – it’s like the middle section of Whole Lotta Love or something! Did you go into the studio thinking we really need to make a tough record?
I think we mostly wanted to do something really different than we’d done before. We’ve been doing improvisation for a couple of years on tour and live and it took us a while to write the record, but we just wanted to move in a different direction – more challenging, musically. And just kind of do something with our musicianship. We’ve been in a band for ten years, you know?
What was it like working with Dave Fridmann? He’s kind of like Sub Pop’s in-house producer these days.
He’s really great, you know? He’s a brilliant guy. He has a really good ear and gives a lot of good advice and opinions. I mean, he was sort of like an outside opinion for our band.
Right, because you didn’t know him beforehand…
No. And he was somewhat critical of our other records, you know? He sort of said “I don’t think this is really right for this”. Because when we first got there he listened to our music for two days straight…
This is the new stuff?
Yeah. And he was like, “Well, I really like your songs but I don’t think that the other records have captured the rawness of your band.” So he really had some goals for this record. And we had our own goals too – so it was like this really great collaboration.
It’s kind of funny, when you listen to the new Low record you can kind of hear Dave’s sort of signature sound there but when I listen to The Woods, it really doesn’t sound like anything he’s done before. Was it a question of stepping out of everyone’s comfort zone?
Absolutely! That’s very insightful - the whole comfort zone thing is what we wanted to get away from.
So at the beginning of the year you posted a letter to your fans on your website that talked about the new record and you kind of said that it was a response to the ‘deadening and watering down’ of music. Was that hitting out at something specific?
Is that the downloading letter?
It’s the downloading letter but I didn’t want to talk about all the mp3 stuff…
Well, Carrie wrote that letter and it was mistakenly signed by the whole band, so we have kind of different opinions about it. I mean, I think that we wanted to do something kind of gutsy with this record and take some risks and just especially with how things are going in our country…these are pretty dark times and it just felt like the record needed to be pretty rebellious.
Sure. I mean, do find contemporary music or particularly contemporary American music is just kind of…
It’s so commercial! I just find that people just really wanna make it and make money and be famous and have posh houses and surroundings and stuff…
I guess your last record dealt quite directly with the complicated nature of dissent in a post 9/11 America. The Woods doesn’t deal so overtly with politics but it’s feels really angry and struck me as a sort of Sleater-Kinney state of the union. Would you say that it was kind of a snapshot of how you view life in America right now?
Yeah, very much so! I’m glad you picked up on that because I think there’s a lot of rebellion on this record and it’s almost a reflection of the sort of culture we have to put up with right now. It’s really difficult.
Totally. There’s a lot of things going on right now that I find scary –not just the re-election of Bush and the depressing situation in Iraq, but the fact that the US Supreme Court is could swing to the far right…
Yes!
…and that could affect legislation like Roe vs. Wade [the landmark case that made abortion legal in the US]…
Yes!! It’s fucked up!
It just feels like the left is kind of dumbstruck at the moment or apathetic. I wondered how you felt about that and whether you still remain positive or whether it’s like…
It’s a really negative time. It’s really like…it’s very depressing. I mean the left really did work quite hard to get John Kerry elected but he was a poor choice.
I just felt like his campaign was never able to push the right buttons.
They didn’t! They never did. They were never just, like, on fire! Howard Dean – that guy was on fire, you know?
That’s true – but then he freaked everyone out!
Yeah, he did! But we need someone that’s right on. Someone that’s really on fire but at the same time is gonna be able to pull through and not be too temperamental. We just haven’t found anyone like that who’s like…inspiring! John Kerry wasn’t inspiring at all.
No. It feels kind of the same over here in some respects – the political scene is very muted. I mean, we have this liberal government but it doesn’t feel like they’re liberal…
No, I mean Tony Blair totally supported Bush. That’s a drag! These are just very dark times. I mean the war in Iraq is just horrible but it’s also like…the Republicans have such entitlement right now, you know? It’s like the whole debate over Terry Schiavo dying…
Yeah, that made the news over here…
You know, they just stepped right in…
Right! They hijacked the situation.
Yeah, they hijacked it! They will hijack every single possible situation. And the anti-abortion protests that happened…
Everything gets neatly tied up.
Yeah, you know?
I just don’t understand how the left in the US doesn’t have the media savvy to match it or the brains to match it or…
They don’t have the marketing savvy that the Republicans have. The Republicans have massive marketing savvy! Those people are advertisers! They put everything in a neat little box for people to just buy up and it’s just really hard to beat that.
[Carrie interrupts to ask how to dial the country code for the US. It seems like a good time to put the politics aside for a while.]So what’s it like having your seventh record about to come out? The word ‘veteran’ has started creeping into your press!
It’s like we’re [picks up the tape recorder, says in a scary voice] ANCIENT!!! [laughs] I think that we’re just so proud of this record. So proud of it! I’ve been playing music since I was eighteen years old, you know? And I feel like I went somewhere different with this record that’s really admirable. It’s not that easy to be in a band. It’s not that easy for us to do what we do. We’re doing it more on our own that a lot of bands. We’ve been trying to stay truly independent, doing things our own way and…well, it’s like I’ve got a family now. We all have lives that we need to take care of. But there’s meaning on this record that makes it worth it to go through all that.
Sure, I mean you have to go on tour, leave your homes and family behind…
Yeah, it can be tough.
Do you ever feel the band Sleater-Kinney is like this entity that exists completely outside the group of people that make it up? That once the record’s out there in the market place there are aspects to being in the band that are out of your control?
I think that we have been through so much over the years. Like, when ‘Dig Me Out’ came out in 97 or whenever there was a real surge of popularity for us in the States. We went through a lot after that record and we had to figure a lot of that stuff out. We decided that we were going to remain artists first and foremost and that all that other stuff – having a public persona and public scrutiny – in the end we pushed all that outside of our own circle of creativity and the work that we wanted to do.
I recently read something by Lois Maffeo [Riot Grrl pioneer] about Sleater-Kinney that I think sums up the band really well. She said that the best thing about you was the fact that you never get pushed into any particular scene or philosophy or whatever – that you’re always just a consistently excellent rock band…
I think the three of us are really different. We’re all really opinionated, intelligent and pretty obstinate human beings! [laughs] And this band is like a collective. So everything is a collective – all the decisions that we make, all the music that we write. Everything we do is a collaboration. So for us the band is about writing about things that we see as important. We deal with things as they come up, you know? As questions come up we say what we think. We don’t always agree! [laughs] So that to me is a great thing and a great accomplishment – to have kept together all these years.
