Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker talks strengthening band bonds and harnessing positivity from pain

The course of an album can change overnight. In Sleater-Kinney’s case, it changed over a phone call.

The seminal indie rock duo was in the process of cutting its 11th album, the January release Little Rope, when vocalist and guitarist Carrie Brownstein discovered her mother and stepfather had died in a car accident.

News of that magnitude would understandably halt any production. But Brownstein, along with bandmate and longtime friend Corin Tucker, elected to dive deeper. What came of that decision is one of Sleater-Kinney’s most thrilling works to date.

“The approach, especially the singing, was intensified by what we were going through. For me, as a singer, watching Carrie go through this really difficult time, everything became very heightened,” says Tucker from her Portland home. “There’s a lot of themes of loss and of being older, and feelings of failure. That runs through the album. But we approached it with a sense of playfulness. We were approaching all of these dark topics, but we tried to still have the approach of toying with things and playing with things, using melody and humor in the album to make it not just dark, but also light.”

Weeks ahead of Sleater-Kinney’s U.S. tour, we spoke with Tucker about the album’s impact on the band, why they’re returning to Las Vegas after 19 years and more.

The last time Sleater-Kinney played here was in 2005 at Vegoose, I think?

I was wondering that too. I think that’s correct. That’s insane.

Was there a particular reason you wanted to return after so long?

We did a great tour with Wilco but we’re just super excited to play our own shows and really do the whole country. We haven’t been able to do that because of COVID and now it just feels like the restrictions are gone and we’re able to go out and really do every city. We’ve heard great things about this venue, too.

Have your opinions of Vegas changed over the years? Back in 2005, you did an interview with the Weekly and didn’t seem too keen on it.

I have a more holistic view of Vegas now. I feel like it’s more of an entertainment and cultural hot spot, not just about gambling. I see a lot of performers and people doing cool and exciting things there. Also, I became a huge fan of the [Max] show Hacks, and that gave me a fresh perspective on Vegas and what it would be like to live there. I loved it so much. And there was that wrestling show—was it called Glow? That was another really interesting peek into Vegas history and doing a show there.

After Vegoose, Sleater-Kinney went on hiatus. Since you reunited, you’ve put out four fantastic albums. How does this era of music compare to your pre-hiatus era in terms of quality and message?

I think we’ve developed as songwriters and so we have different methodologies in terms of writing. We can demo something out and use a synthesizer, or we can add textures and layers because of how technology is now. We want to develop the songs and have them be as full as possible. But I still think that Little Rope is one of the most raw albums we’ve made. It’s really emotional. And that’s because of what both of us have gone through in the past two years. We don’t want to move away from that kind of emotional connection with music. That has to be at the core of everything.

Does producing an album like this change your relationship as bandmates and as friends?

I think it strengthened our friendship. The music allowed us to have a way through it, and that gives your friendship a really nice boost to strengthen that and to be able to say, “I’m here for you, and I want to help you through something that’s really hard.” That helps us as friends and as collaborators to say, “I’m not just going to check out when things are tough.”

One thing I really enjoy are the music videos for the album. I thought Succession’s J. Smith-Cameron’s performance in “Say It Like You Mean It” was amazing. How was it spending time with her?

She’s an incredibly thoughtful actress. She wanted to go through every single line of the song and understand the meaning, the character, and Carrie directed it. Carrie had a larger vision for the song, for the dramatic moment that this woman feels. She’s been sort of abandoned in this space, and so she just directed J. through the whole thing. It was incredible because of how J. uses her body as an actress. It was really explosive to ask her to do something and to see how she could command that on screen.

Immediately when I saw her performance, I wondered what direction Carrie gave.

Because she herself is a performer, she was very physical. Like, the dancing thing, that was something that Carrie in the moment was like, “What if we have you …” and then J. Smith-Cameron runs with it and is suddenly doing ballroom dancing with an invisible partner. It was layers of meaning that were

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