Sleater-Kinney’s 11th studio album, “Little Rope,” feels in some ways like a new chapter for the band and the friendship of founding member Corin Tucker and songwriting partner Carrie Brownstein.
In the midst of album sessions in the fall of 2022, Brownstein learned that her mother and stepfather had died in a car accident in Italy. Tucker was quick to lend her friend support, and the pair found strength through creating music together.
“I just tried to show up for her and be her friend through it,” says Tucker, who formed the band with Brownstein in 1994.
Sleater-Kinney released “Little Rope” in January.
“For us, that just meant playing guitar because it’s something we like to do together, and it brings us a lot of joy,” Tucker says. “It was just sort of our place that we could go to in spite of the difficult, horrible thing that she was going through.”
Listening to their performances on the album, one can get a sense of the tight emotional connection they shared during that time. The tragic news dramatically shifted the tone of the album and made things “a lot more emotional and gave it a heightened sense of purpose even though we were doing something that incorporated a sense of loss and mortality and grief,” Tucker says. Even though not every song was inspired by the loss, it certainly “colored how the album sounded.”
“We really wanted to make an album that reached out to people, and that was very direct and emotional,” Tucker says. “We worked hard on making something that we felt was impactful.”
For example, “Six Mistakes,” a song about a woman who feels like she isn’t seen, shifted from a lighter, pop-based song into something more dramatic with a flurry of “ferocious” guitar playing.
“There are all these layers of guitar that Carrie added that just heightened the drama of that song, and it became a sadder song,” says Tucker. “The vocals became much more intense, and it wasn’t such a pop song. It was more sort of a desperate ballad.”
The album’s title comes from their song “Small Finds,” which tells the story of a dog trying to find “little pops of joy in the day” and the “small things that keep us going.” In the song, the character says, “give me a little rope.”
“We wanted a title that had a duality to it that had a sense of the idea of asking for more freedom, but also the idea of being tied to the people around us,” explains Tucker. “The idea of having a lifeline thrown at us that can take us in a different direction than the one we’re going in. We liked that imagery as being sort of multilayered for the album.”
The band recorded the album at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, Oregon with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. Congleton’s “tasteful, sharp, quick-moving” tendencies as a producer, was conductive to the band’s desire to often “pivot and make decisions and keep moving in the studio,” Tucker says. He helped the band achieve the best performance they could of each song.
“Sometimes that meant doing an extra take or two that was just completely letting go of any thought processes and just going for raw emotion,” says Tucker.
On “Say It Like You Mean It,” Tucker recalls him telling her that at “the end of it I really want you to completely go for it and don’t try and make it pretty. Don’t even try to hit the notes, just sing with your emotions.”
The album also gave them a chance to further grow their chemistry with drummer Angie Boylan, who joined the band after founding drummer Janet Weiss’ departure in 2019.
“I love her playing, and I think we do have a good chemistry as a band,” says Tucker. “We really enjoy playing together, and it was really fun to have her play on the record.”
Sleater-Kinney also recently released a new audio and visual-based EP called “Frayed Rope Sessions,” featuring reimagined versions of three songs from “Little Rope.”
Despite the darker subject matter of their latest material, Tucker and her bandmates are excited to perform the songs live on their current tour.
“Even though sometimes the subject matter is dark on these songs, they’re sort of that happy, sad kind of song that has an uplifting melody that you kind of want to sing along to, even if the lyrics are sort of sad or downtrodden,” she says. “I think it’s going to be really fun to play these live.”
That includes Chicago, where the band’s had many memorable shows. Tucker loved playing Metro during the band’s early tours and the support they’ve received from the city since.
“Chicago was always a really great town for us,” she says. “We felt like people really got the band and were excited about us and were just open to going on the ride with us for each album.”
