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The Core of
the Rock
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Sleater-Kinney, Enemymine, Sub Debs LaLuna 215 SE 9th Ave., 241-5862 9 pm Saturday, Feb. 27 $5 advance Sleater-Kinney will also play Seattle's RKCNDY on Friday, Feb. 26. For a review of The Hot Rock, see Recorded Music. Being in Corin Tucker's band Cadallaca has made me either very well or very poorly qualified to comment on her other band, Sleater-Kinney. I have watched at close range as the group has evolved, developing into an accomplished rock outfit. Despite overwhelming success, the trio remains rooted in the fertile home-town scenes of Olympia and Portland and prioritizes playing with local bands. But as Sleater-Kinney releases its third full-length album, The Hot Rock, and prepares for a tour of the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, Corin, co-guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss face a growing challenge: playing for a widening audience and simultaneously working to retain their integrity and vision. This is difficult when your integrity is based on commercial independence and your vision is based on feminist politics and innovative music. But the way these three have stuck to their guns has inspired me and many other women who play music and make art. Sleater-Kinney has developed from strong strands of musicianship and friendship. Corin and Carrie met in Olympia in 1991, when they were playing in Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, respectively. After they'd played as Sleater-Kinney for two years, Portlander Janet, the drummer for Quasi, joined them in 1996. Their collaboration and their musical inventiveness have grown complex and reached a new fruition on their latest album. Last summer I visited the band at Avast Studio in Seattle where the lanky thinker Roger Moutenot (producer for Yo La Tengo) presided over the production of their new record. On previous Sleater-Kinney albums guitars dominated, but looking around the studio I saw a Roland keyboard, a cello, a melodica, an old piano and various percussion instruments--an egg shaker, clacker-sticks, a fish, a Vibra-Slap. The guitars were there, but this time they were accompanied by a variety of amps--a Fender Twin Reverb, a Music Man combo, a Fender Reverb Deluxe, a big Ampeg, an old elementary school turntable with a speaker and an Echoplex. "We were hoping to try some new sounds, and Roger really facilitated our experimentation process," Janet says. "I think we really got to push ourselves." Corin, Janet and I stood in the control room watching Carrie doing a vocal take. She was pushing herself. Her back to the control-room window, she sang with her hands on the headphones, exploring registers I hadn't heard in her previous work. Confident melodies and a strong, grounded voice had replaced unearthly screaming and swerving backups, especially on the single "Get Up." Behind Carrie big pieces of paper were taped to the wall, sketches of time and tracks--one month, many tracks, many layers. Only when I visited did I realize the complexity of the project and the new ways they were learning to work and play with each other. The album's title, The Hot Rock, comes from a Robert Redford movie of the same name about greedy and inept heisters. It suggests the complex layering of meaning found throughout the album: You have to cooperate to pull off a successful robbery; you must adapt and change your disguise often. Throughout the album the band uses multiple meanings, puns and metaphors to make specific worlds out of general situations. "The End of You," which can be read as a comment on the need to subsume one's ego to the greater good, is one of my favorites. At first it appears to be a series of clichéd metaphors about a ship breaking up in a storm. But on a closer reading, the song presents ideas you may have written in the margins of your copy of Homer's Odyssey. What does it mean to come home? How does your absence affect that place in your imagination? How do you maintain your integrity when your fate is at the whim of an ever-transforming goddess? What is the meaning of sacrifice? Of loyalty? When I ask her if this song is about the Odyssey, Corin replies, "that among other things, of course." In addition to the usefulness of the classics, the song explores the purpose of staying on an independent label, developing your art in an organic way and staying true to a vision that could be commandeered by those wanting a piece of it. Recently, the members of Sleater-Kinney went on a press tour of Europe sponsored by their European label, Matador U.K. Janet met up with Corin and Carrie in London after flying in from a Japanese and Australian tour with Quasi and Elliott Smith. Probably the hardest working musician in Portland, Janet didn't think twice about making this trip halfway around the world to meet her bandmates. The purpose of the press tour was to give interviews and have pictures taken in advance of the band's upcoming tour. This is the part of the job that's kind of like making coffee for the boss: It's slightly degrading and it is not your main purpose. Confronted by questions which often seemed designed to either educate the lazy or infuriate the band ("Are you still a riot grrl?"), the tour was something of a test. "This Belgian news guy asked us if we, as a band, get our periods at the same time," Corin says indignantly. "How can you even answer this? It has nothing to do with our music!" The biggest drain may have come from their ironic schedule--talking about the band for eight hours a day but never actually playing music. "I think that was the most tiring thing," Carrie says. "We never had the release of playing at the end of the day." The only photos Corin has from her trip to Europe were taken on a mini-Polaroid that Janet got for her in Japan. The tiny photos are close-ups of the three of them, posing in various combinations, their faces pressed close together. Looking at the pictures I realize how tightly Sleater-Kinney has had to circle its wagons to survive an onslaught of exposure and the pressure to explain what the band is doing. But I also see that part of Sleater-Kinney's success is based in a solid reliance upon and trust in each other. "We have to stay really aware that the band revolves around our relationships with each other," Janet says, "and we have to always take new steps to protect this connection in all the things we do." In many ways, The Hot Rock shows how the ethics of independence
and staying true to one's vision can work and why it is important
that they should. As Sleater-Kinney gets more attention in the media,
I hope these ideas gain a wider currency. What if kids want to play
music in their hometowns instead of moving to Santa Monica? What if
women are treated with respect when they take the stage in front of
a huge amplifier? The seeming contradiction between Sleater-Kinney's
popularity, signified by massive press coverage, and its independence
is really not a contradiction at all. Corin, Carrie and Janet have grabbed
the stage on their own terms and, understanding the power that gives
them, take every opportunity to use it. I love them for it.
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