Sleater-Kinney has always been a band for the “in-betweeners,” alternative queers who are too punk for mainstream gay culture but still don’t fit into the predominantly white, cishet worlds of indie and punk rock. Over the last 30 years, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker have walked that tightrope, crafting their own brand of scruffy indie rock that melds quirky guitar lines with powerhouse rock-and-roll vocals. And although their decades-long friendship has gone through many different “eras,” as Brownstein phrases it, they became even more bonded after a recent tragedy.
“The death of my mom was something over which we became very connected,” Brownstein tells me over brunch in the courtyard of a Los Feliz restaurant. “It’s a real wake-up call in terms of who your friends are and who you can rely on.”
In fact, it was Tucker who had the difficult task of notifying Brownstein that her mother and stepfather had died in a car accident while on vacation in Italy in the fall of 2022. This sudden loss was the bedrock on which their new album Little Rope would be built. The LP, out January 19 from Loma Vista, is the group’s catchiest and most powerful since 2005’s The Woods, covering the messiness of life, loss, and rebellion. “This album had an urgency that, even before the accident, we were very ready to be writing,” Brownstein says.
That urgency comes through in the album’s undeniable physicality. The guitar riffs are smoldering, imbuing the raucous record with a punk-rock spirit. Despite the heavy subject matter that the album takes on — including death, the eradication of LGBTQ+ rights, and feelings of existential dread — it’s packed with indelible earworms. Brownstein references the classic Buzzcocks track “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldnt’ve?”) to explain the pairing of such charged lyrics with hummable melodies: “It’s a sad song really, but it’s so catchy. You don’t realize that you’re fist-raising to someone’s heartbreak. But why not? That’s how you transform those things, by collectively getting people to join you in a feeling until it’s not that feeling anymore.”
At the heart of Little Rope is the dance-rock track “Crusader,” which serves as a rallying cry to fight the right-wingers who are trying to erase queer and trans people from public life. Over angular guitar lines, Brownstein sings, “You’re burning all the books in this town / But you can’t destroy the words in our mouths.” Tucker tells me that the song was written for queer youth who are scared for their future they will inherit. “The one thing that I think we’d want to say to the 12-year-old kid who’s really struggling is ‘You’re not alone,’” Tucker says, “Sometimes that’s all you need to know to get through that one day.” To which Brownstein adds, “And also a big ‘fuck you’ to the people who are coming after us.”
Ahead of Little Rope’s release, Them sat down with Sleater-Kinney to talk about being in a queer band in the ’90s, making music for the freaks and weirdos, and their blistering new album.
I was struck by a hair-rising line in “Hunt You Down” in which you sing, “The thing you fear the most will hunt you down.” On the surface, it may seem menacing but I also feel like it’s freeing in a way. There is an acceptance in that sentiment. Can you elaborate on that?
Carrie Brownstein: I was listening to Kate Bowler’s podcast [Everything Happens] and she had a guest who was a poet and a funeral director. He was talking about these parents who had lost a child, and the parents said, “The thing you fear the most will hunt you down.” That perfectly describes existential dread. Acceptance, I think, is a kind of liberation, whether it’s death or something else that haunts you. Coming to terms with the fact that being at the mercy of what we fear is intrinsic to being alive.
Corin Tucker: There is a theme of not just losing people, but knowing that your own time here is limited and your time with your people here is limited. As you get older, that just becomes the writing on the wall.
CB: A lot of this album is less about embracing or rejecting, but more sitting in the in-between of it — less “acceptance” or self-help lingo, and more [realizing] that those extremes are rare, and all the messy middle is much more of what life is made of.
“Crusader” seems to be speaking about the recent spate of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Can you talk to me about that track?
CT: I don’t know if this is off-topic, but I took my daughter to the Keith Haring exhibit, and I was explaining what happened during the AIDS crisis, because she’s never learned about that. I was like, “It was terrible. And all of these men died and the Reagans were like, ‘We don’t care.’ It was only because ACT UP stood up and demanded that they deserved to be taken care of, that anything changed.” That was a really incredibly moving thing to watch as a child. It totally informed Riot Grrrl and all of the activism that was connected to the feminist movement, too. It’s really frustrating that we’re seeing this reaction to social progression. But in some ways, it’s just like, “Well, roll up your sleeves because we’re still in it.”
CB: We’re sold this idea, especially in the U.S., that our path is linear and that it’s always moving upward. That is actually a fallacy, and inequality leaves most people out of that equation. But “Crusader,” I think specifically does address what Corin is talking about: the day-to-day horror of having rights be reversed, and people basically almost being asked to disappear. This forced erasure and persecution of particularly trans people, but also queer people.
I think “Crusader” fits on the album in the sense that there’s a broader theme of precarity, and being in a space that is very fragile, but trying to find a way to cohere around the struggle and find your way through it with other people.
How did you feel being a queer person making music in the Kill Rock Stars/ Riot Grrrl scene in the ’90s as opposed to now?
CT: The thing is it wasn’t just one thing or the other. It was pretty messy. We were just like, “Well, this is who we are and we’re not going to make adjustments for anyone.” I think there was just a lack of that in rock music up to that point. When we toured the South, people were like, “I need to talk to you right now.” Because there wasn’t a lot of that representation, especially in rock music. I think that connection that we felt when we went out and played shows, made us realize this is important to talk about.
When I discovered any musicians that were queer growing up, it mattered a lot to me because I was like, “Oh, cool, I can do this then, too!”
CT: I was a total Prince fanatic when I was a kid, and he did that with his music, subtly. He had songs where he was like, “Am I gay or straight? Am I this or that?” He was questioning his own identity, his own sexuality, his own everything. And that just rang a bell in my head when I was a kid, like, “Oh, you don’t have to be exactly this stereotype of a gender?” It’s just very freeing. I feel like, if we’ve done that for people that listen to our music in any way, it’s a two-way street.
Having given Sleater-Kinney interviews for decades now, do you feel like you’ve gone through waves of speaking more or less about your queerness?
CB: I think the ’90s were different in the sense that rock music, especially, was still a cis white male institution, and codified by magazines and media that were run by those very people. So, if you came along and were “other” in any way, whether it was your ethnicity or sexuality, you were often pigeonholed. I think for most artists, there was a sense that you can’t separate who you are from what you make, but you were desperate to be seen on the same canvas and on the same platform as these other people. “How come this cis white guy doesn’t have to talk about his identity and can just talk about his music? Why do I only have to talk about my sexuality?”
It’s exhausting. It’s an added step, and it’s unfair. I think early on [in interviews], you can feel that defensiveness coming out. I think there was a sense of protectionism around our music. We have members in the band who are queer, but we’re not just a queer band. We’re not just a female band. We’re a band. When I go back and think about how we tried to represent ourselves, a lot of it was trying to just be taken at face value for our music.
How do you feel about queer representation in music today?
CB: I absolutely think representation is crucial. It’s a privilege to be able to deny an aspect of your identity through art and just to say, “That’s not a qualifier that I’m leading with right now.” Not everyone has that privilege. I think as artists most of us are lucky that we get to exist in a space where we can have multiple qualifiers and identities. But I think because we live in an unjust society with discrimination, representation is very important. And [also] standing up for other people and making yourself visible, and making sure no one else’s light is dimmed.
As the cultural conversation becomes more nuanced, it allows people to have multitudes. Even the notion of genre has become deconstructed. People are allowed this fluidity of identity and musical style. They can be judged and listened to and assessed by their artistry or musicianship, and not just for who they are.
As Sleater-Kinney, I can see us sort of following that. And of course, to your earlier point about “Crusader,” there are real consequences for certain people to put themselves out there. What started to feel like embracing everything has now become people potentially having to hide or diminish aspects of themselves, less so, I think artistically than in real-world situations with real-life consequences. But artists are of the world and are sensitive to those fluctuations. And I think we were, too.
Do you feel like queer icons?
CB: I love people that can embrace their own iconic status. I think personally, I’m too introverted and shy for that, but I absolutely am grateful for any love that we get, and absolutely love queer culture. It has saved me and continues to save and inspire me. I think it’s where some of the best art and politics and writing and ideas have come from. As much as we can pull the rest of society into the queer lens, I think that only benefits everyone.
To me, you’re one of those bands that is so influential to queer people who don’t even fit within larger queer culture. The freaks who like punk and don’t feel at home in either world, which is why I gravitated to your band.
CB: In terms of legislation, I want everyone to be safe and accepted and cared for by the people and states and governments that they live within and under. But in terms of the mainstream: whoever wants to be accepted by the mainstream, great. But I’m not interested in mainstream culture. I just think we’re with the freaks and the weirdos, and that’s who we are. That’s okay, too. Aim for whatever you need, and I will fight for your rights and to protect people. But I don’t want to exist in the middle. That’s not interesting to me artistically. I like the fringes of queer culture. I like the weirdos and the outliers. Our music has always been for those people.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Little Rope is available January 19 via Loma Vista Recordings.
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