Sleater-Kinney Stand United on The Center Won't Hold
Carrie Brownstein didn’t hesitate when Corin Tucker asked her if she wanted to resume making music as Sleater-Kinney four years ago. After a 10 year hiatus, the pair—and their longtime drummer, Janet Weiss—wrote and recorded No Cities To Love, an arresting collection of anthemic confessionals and ballads. To their delight, the album was a success, beloved by their older fans and adopted by new listeners. And it reestablished Sleater-Kinney as one of music’s most powerful forces.
Today, they return with The Center Won’t Hold, written and recorded after the No Cities to Love tour for and in light of the 2016 presidential election. The album is largely about seeking community, about finding people to support who will support you back. This is a familiar theme for the band, but it’s buoyed by their new sonic profile—courtesy of St. Vincent, who produced the album. The album still has Tucker and Brownstein’s characteristic conversational lead guitar lines and extraordinary vocals, as well as Tucker’s powerful, direct drumming. But it also employs more synths, bass, and vocal layering than previous efforts. The collaboration is extremely effective.
About that drumming, though: since the group announced the album and its tour, Weiss announced that she was leaving Sleater-Kinney immediately, and would be touring with a different band this fall (Weiss's tour has since been canceled following a reported accident she suffered). It clearly stung. Speaking to the The New York Times, Tucker and Brownstein seem to struggle to understand why this had happened. “It’s been a surprising and sad turn of events,” Tucker said. “There’s nothing that feels like this band. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do it.”
Last week, GQ talked with Sleater-Kinney about Weiss’s departure, since the band has had more time to fully process and understand the loss. We also talked about working with St. Vincent, building a community with your music, and, of course, death.
GQ: When did you start working on The Center Won't Hold? What were you thinking about when you started writing?
Carrie Brownstein: We started working on the album in early 2017. We had toured for No Cities To Love for almost two years on and off. I think we were very happy with how that album release and touring had gone, and that we achieved what we set out to do. We came back with an album that really announced the second chapter of Sleater-Kinney, or I should say a "new chapter" of Sleater-Kinney. It wasn't a reunion. It felt like a step forward. It wasn't nostalgia-based. Our fan base spread across a wide demographic. We had young new fans and our older fans. It felt very exhilarating.
We knew we wanted to keep writing music, but I think after the election at the end of 2016 there was obviously a sense of grief and depression. I think often, we've used this band as a way of grappling with the messier aspects of life—both personal and political. We started both writing a little bit in person. I was in Los Angeles and Corin and Janet were in Portland. But often because of the geographical distance, we were sending songs back and forth. Corin and I were writing demos in our respective homes,, and then sending those to everyone and adding ideas in that way. Which was definitely a different methodology for us.
It's very different from the beginning stages of the band, where you'd go to someone's house and record an album in a week.
Brownstein: Yeah, we haven't recorded an album like that since Dig Me Out. There's been a couple of iterations of how we'd write. Sometimes she and I would write alone in her house on guitars, and then we would all play together with Janet in a rehearsal space. I think you can start to rely on that as a writing tool.
The process for us really changed with No Cities. This new album is sort of a continuation of that. With No Cities, there was a lot of editing. There was over writing and thinking about all the different parts and how they might be able to fit together to form a song and a set. There was a precedent for it, but I think we were actually really relieved to have different tools. We knew it would create something new for us.
Corin Tucker: We were actually craving the idea of doing something different with this record. Because we were geographically apart for a lot of it, it actually gave us new tools to help us be more creative.
How did you feel like you were approaching this political moment in this time?
Tucker: We wanted a way to express ourselves and to create characters that were grappling with the new ugly reality. I don't think we wanted it to be anything that was an easy answer or slogan or mission statement. That didn't feel authentic to us. It didn't feel authentic to the grief we were feeling. I think we really wanted to be able to express grief and impact on the characters that are on this album. And to explore the more personal impact of this politically and cultural moment.
It seems like throughout the album, I heard of a thread of how to love other people. It's not just about taking political action but it's about buying into your relationships.
Brownstein: We were exploring ideas of collaboration and community and connection as a fulcrum for resistance. As a way to hope and struggle. I think connection is a form of hope. It's one of the only glimmering moments right now in an otherwise despairing and difficult time. We wanted to celebrate the ways that other people help us get through the day to day.
That was one of the things we thought about for a song like "LOVE," which is a rumination on togetherness. And you can hear that theme in the way we structured other songs songs that speak to a certain kind of despondency, like "Can I Go On" and "Reach Out." The singer is alone in the verses, but when you get to the chorus, you're met by a group of singers. We wanted that as a thematic and symbolic through line. The audience could get to the chorus and we could all join in with these words together. That's what people are seeking right now. Whether they're seeking it online, in their neighborhoods, or in their cities, or when they go out to protest, they're looking around to feel understood. To feel like they're being propped up and held up by other people that want to see goodness survive.
Is that how people have been reacting to the album so far?
Tucker: That's our hope. We always want to encourage a sense of community at our shows and with our audience. That's something we relied on throughout our career. It's something that's so important to us as this band. It's a theme throughout all of our efforts.
Brownstein: I definitely remember playing a couple of the songs to some of my close friends. I played "LOVE" to one of my friends and she started crying. She said, "This is the song I want to listen to every day for the rest of the summer." I was like, "Okay, but you have to wait until August 16th!"
"LOVE" makes for an interesting summer mood. It's not a particularly happy song.
Brownstein: It's a little bittersweet. But life is really bittersweet right now.
How and when did you decide to start working with St. Vincent for this album?
Tucker: She's someone that we've known for a long time. She's someone that we talked about possibly working with, toying with that idea for awhile. For this album, we were actually thinking we might use more than one producer, we just didn't know what we thought would work. So went into the studio with Annie to just try things out and try a couple of songs. The results were so productive and so impressive that we felt we really wanted to make the whole album with her.
She got what you were going for immediately?
Brownstein: I think she really did. We're mutual fans of each other's work. She's someone who understands and appreciates the strength in this band. But she's also fearless. As an artist, she always wants to set the bar higher with each album. We share that sense. I think when she heard the demos, she wanted to take each song and make it it's own world. Instead of just documenting, okay we're going into the studio to make some sounds, it was like, “Well, let's explore. What's the essence of this song? What are you all trying to say?” It was very in-depth, it was very immersive.
A good, palpable example of her approach is "Hurry on Home." All of us, both in this band and our fans, love Corin's voice. It's unique. Sometimes it's a deal breaker but it's very powerful. It's one of our strengths as a band. We've worked with many amazing engineers and producers. But no one has ever just put Corin in front of a mic and said, "I want to layer your voice eight times." In that song, Annie wanted to start the song with Corin's voice. She just started stacking these takes of Corin that turned into the intro. I think those kinds of instinctual ideas and intuitive ideas, really suited us. It felt very organic and very freeing. Here's the layout of the band, here's what we have on the landscape. Let's just re-order it. That was great. It was a really wonderful fit early on. There was a lot of joy in the recording process.
What was your favorite song on the album to record?
Tucker: "RUINS" was my favorite. It was a really awesome exploration of a catastrophic landscape. Annie really pushed me to do things with my voice that pushes the band in a new direction.
Brownstein: I loved doing vocals on "Center Won't Hold." I loved "Reach Out." All the background vocals on the chorus.
How has your relationship to each other changed since the moment you decided to embark upon the group’s next chapter?
Tucker: We really respect our friendship and our collaboration. We approached working together again with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wanting to make it a healthy and respectful collaboration. We're more able to do that now that we're older.
So it's gotten easier?
Tucker: I think so!
Brownstein: I think there's more clarity! It doesn't have to be in your 30s or 40s, you can have these realizations in your 20s, but all the cliches start to come through. Life is fragile. You've seen hurt, you see hurt in the world. You lose friends. People die. There's a lot of things that start to fall apart that you used to rely on. When you realize that you have a collaborator and an entity like a band that gives you freedom and allows you to be yourself. I think you really value that once you have that perspective. It's a pleasure to maintain it. It's always a little bit of work, of course. It's actually hard work. But once you realize that something has value, the other things become superfluous. You just know we need to maintain this. We'll deal with the bigger stuff, but we know we want to take care of this thing.
I guess you all have been thinking about this a lot, now that you're down a member.
Brownstein: Yep.
What do you think it'll be like to tour without Janet?
Tucker: There's elements of sadness around this relationship that we had for a long time. It will definitely be different. That's a part of life and that's a part of getting older too.
Brownstein: All iterations of relationships, anything that you rely on for 20 or 25 years, have permutations and vicissitudes. I think that we just have to be grateful for the time we had with Janet. It was beautiful and exciting and we just loved playing with her. And her playing on this record is amazing. We wanted her to stay in the band and she really didn't want to, even when we asked her to stay. We'll miss playing live with her and miss a lot of other things about her. But I think we just have to look to the future and think of this as a challenge that we'll overcome. And find a way to make this into the next chapter for this band. It is what it is.
We have to look at it as a privilege to get to play. It's very rare to be in a band that people love and feel a connection to. As a songwriter, we want to keep writing songs. We'll find other collaborators. It won't be the same. And that's okay. Either the music will resonate with people or it won't. And I think that there's a lot on this record that will resonate with people. I think going forward, we'll write new songs that resonate with people. So it will be different, but we just have to embrace that. Just like we've embraced all the other things that have turned out different in life than we thought.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
