Sleater-Kinney on navigating sudden tragedy and finding healing through music
Bandmates Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker explain how grief affected their new album, Little Rope
In the fall of 2022, the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney was in the studio recording their latest album, Little Rope, when tragedy struck.
Co-guitarist and co-vocalist Carrie Brownstein received the terrible news that her mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident while vacationing in Italy. The band would've been forgiven for putting Little Rope on pause, but they decided to push forward and complete the record instead.
As grief set in, Brownstein says she found a form of healing and therapy in something very familiar to her: playing guitar.
"The ritual of playing was really crucial," she tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "Grief renders you very incoherent. It is not something that I was accustomed to. It was a void that I couldn't really make my way out of … but guitar is something I've known.
"I know what the choreography of playing guitar is. I know what to do with my hands — I don't know what to do with my hands as a grieving person. I don't know what to do with my feet. Your body is reconfigured because you're in such a strange emotional state. So guitar was a way of giving myself shape again. And to create songs with it was a way of giving form to something that felt very nebulous."
When you face death, when you face the reality of it that all of us will face, it gives your life meaning.- Corin Tucker
According to Brownstein, one of the biggest misunderstandings about grief is that it's expressed through weeping and wailing. "That's part of it," she says, "but the rest of it is just this mush that you're wading through…. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to deal with mush."
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Corin Tucker, Sleater-Kinney's other co-guitarist and co-vocalist, says grief gave the band a deeper purpose. "When you face death, when you face the reality of it that all of us will face, it gives your life meaning," she says.
"It's like, oh, I for sure will not be here someday and what do I want to do with the remaining time that I have? What is important to me? And it turned out this band is still really important to us. It's a place where we can put some of our deepest feelings. And so that was motivating, I think, in trying to finish the record and make the songs as good as we could."
The full interview with Sleater-Kinney is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker talk more about Little Rope, their friendship and the 30th anniversary of the band. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Sleater-Kinney produced by Vanessa Nigro.
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