Photo Credit: Nikko LaMere
On the song “Combat Rock” from 2002’s One Beat, Sleater-Kinney drew a hard line in the sand with the following proclamation: Dissent’s not treason, but they talk like it’s the same. The lyrics were a direct reference to the post-September 11 shell-shocked state of the country, a not-so-distant, peak-nationalistic point in time where it wasn’t uncommon for a musician or band’s vocal opposition to the looming U.S. invasion of Iraq to be met with backlash or a boycott or some combination of the two. Dissent or an act of defiance was written off as a form of disloyalty by many.
Sleater-Kinney’s latest record, The Center Won’t Hold, is a similar act of defiance coming from a band that has forged their own future and their own path, time and time again. But between the lustrous (albeit, still trademark Sleater-Kinney level of loud) production courtesy of Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, and Janet Weiss’s sudden departure just a couple of months prior to their tour kickoff (Weiss tweeted “The band is heading in a new direction and it is time for me to move on”), The Center Won’t Hold had already proven to be divisive before it even officially came out into the world.
“i love s-k, but this whole marketing strategy makes me feel uncomfortable,” wrote a follower on one of the band’s Instagram posts promoting the lyric video for a soon-to-be-dropped song. Vocalist and guitarist, Carrie Brownstein simply checkmated with “uncomfortable times make for uncomfortable music.”
On the album’s opener and title-track, Brownstein, on the verge of a near-howl, sings “I need something pretty / To help me ease my pain / I need something ugly / To put me in my place.” The song is a slow build-up, restrained and carefully self-regulated, until its final minute, where it swells into a thunder of guitar and drums, into that familiar sonic blitz Sleater-Kinney has become synonymous with. At its near-close, vocalist and guitarist Corin Tucker erupts into full-on banshee yell and declares over and over: “The center won’t hold, No, the center won’t hold.”
The Pacific Northwest rockers’ latest record is by no means intended as a direct response to the Trump administration. It does, however, encapsulate what it means to live in our current cultural climate—the devastation following Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, working through feelings of grief and isolation, the criticalness of small acts of solidarity and what Tucker describes as loving your friends, family, community and collaborators in the face of the hostility and hatred of this administration.
“Sleater-Kinney as a band has a lot of protest songs,” Tucker says. “It’s something that we have done throughout our career and those songs are a really important part of our catalog. However, on this record, we wanted to do something different with the voices and characters on this album. It’s more about being able to express a whole range of emotions. The song ‘Broken’ has to do with [Ford’s testimony] and is about feelings of disappointment, rage and sorrow. It’s not meant to have a message of ‘Here’s how to tackle this problem,’ and I think that’s OK.”
Tucker continues: “I think that’s really important for us, to be able to just have a creative outlet to say this is how we’re feeling right now and this is how incredibly sad this moment is.”
Tracks like “Love” and “Can I Go On” channel some of those feelings of fear, despair and uncertainty into the will to survive, turning bleakness into moments of brightness.
“In ‘Can I Go On,’ by the time we get to the chorus, everyone is singing together—even that kind of small act of solidarity is really important. It makes a person feel heard and seen,” Tucker mentions. “That simple act of kindness and compassion truly is a kind of heroism that can counteract the small-mindedness that we’re up against right now.”
“Love,” an homage to friendship, also exemplifies how the band has consistently stayed true to their earliest practices and ideologies—their dedication to tackling sexist social hierarchies and giving women a sense of agency and autonomy over their own bodies, demanding to be seen and heard, along with the power of kinship and community, an especially significant takeaway for much of the band’s queer fanbase.
“I think when we started as a band, there was so much more hostility, even towards just women playing music,” says Tucker regarding the band’s starting point in the early ’90s. “We felt like the band was a kind of safety net. The three of us kind of were just like, it’s just us against the world.”
Earlier last month, after much anticipation, Brownstein and Tucker revealed that Angie Boylan (of beloved East Coast DIY punk bands like Freezing Cold and Cheeky) would be stepping up to drummer duty. Tucker mentions that it was her husband, filmmaker and music video director Lance Bangs, who had suggested connecting with Boylan. “About 12 years ago, there was this Sleater-Kinney cover band in Brooklyn, N.Y. Angie was the drummer.” Tucker says. “We said, ‘Let’s see how this goes,’ and we flew her out to Portland. She just she blew us away. She was so good. We got really lucky since she knew a bunch of our songs already.”
Regarding what Sleater-Kinney has in store during their upcoming tour, Tucker says her hope is to provide a sense of community at every show. The band’s shows have served as a testament to the power behind collective envisioning and working towards greater transformative change. “People who think that women deserve a strong role in politics and deserve respect and deserve autonomy over their own bodies are really important to us. We’re working with this organization called Head Count on our tour that is registering people to vote at each one of our shows during this tour. For us, that’s a way to show people how important voting is and connect that to our music. The fact that our shows that we do are meant to be a source of coming together for people and a celebration of community.”
Sleater-Kinney perform with opening act Shamir at the Pabst Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 16, at 8 p.m.
