In addition to writing songs for Sleater-Kinney, her iconic feminist punk band with Corin Tucker (playing The Studio at The Factory on March 5), she’s written hipster-skewering sketch comedy on Portlandia, dark satire in collaboration with St. Vincent for their 2020 film The Nowhere Inn and confessional storytelling in her 2015 memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.
But on the rare occasion when Brownstein can’t find the right words to express herself, she lets her guitar speak for her.
“I started playing guitar at 15, a time when I was more diffident and didn't quite have the words or means with which to express myself,” she says. “I used guitar as a way of trying on boldness and brazenness and even conjuring some of the ugliness and uncertainty that I felt.”
Sleater-Kinney’s latest album, Little Rope, deals largely with the ugliest and most uncertain emotion of all: grief.
In 2022, Brownstein’s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident while on vacation in Italy, and much of the album is spent processing that loss. Unlike previous albums, on which Brownstein and Tucker would evenly split vocals, Brownstein steps away from the mic to channel her feelings through her guitar.
“I haven't necessarily had to return to that state or use guitar in that way,” she says. “But while grieving, I felt [...] that sense of incoherency and I think guitar mimics the human voice really well. It has an emotionality. The notes bend and that's not something you get on every instrument. [...] It's a very conversational instrument, and I love that about it. It's very expressive.”
Little Rope was produced by the great John Congleton, a Dallas native known for his work with St. Vincent, The Polyphonic Spree and countless others. While Little Rope is the first collaboration between Congleton and Sleater-Kinney, it came about after years of mutual admiration.
“John's old band, Paper Chase, was on Kill Rock Stars, which was a label that we were on in the early part of our career,” Brownstein says. “So we've been circling around each other for many years [...] and we've actually been in conversation with him to produce since 2015, when we did No Cities to Love. The timing has never quite worked out.”
The stars finally aligned on Little Rope. Congleton was available to work with Sleater-Kinney, and more important, he had a stylistic approach that Brownstein felt matched their goals for the record.
“We love John’s sensibility, his taste, his work ethic,” says Brownstein. “He's unafraid of conjuring the ugly and the messy and the disgusting in terms of guitar tones, and then he's really good at contrasting that with things that are melodic and beautiful and creating this immersive sonic world.”
Little Rope wasn't produced at Congleton’s Elmwood Recording Studio in Oak Cliff, but Brownstein has a fondness for Dallas all the same. She’s particularly fascinated by Trees, where Sleater-Kinney played in 1999.
“It’s difficult for you to forget because there are literal trees, basically blocking the view of both the audience and the band,” she says. “It's clever. It's strange. It's uniquely Dallas.”
With three decades in the music industry under her belt, Brownstein has seen her career shift several times, much of it for the better. She is grateful for the support Sleater-Kinney now have on tour as opposed to the Wild West of touring as an indie band in the '90s.
“We have had the tours where we booked all our own shows, she says. “Leaving messages. Doing a myriad of jobs. Lifting our own equipment. Using the local sound person and just being at the mercy of however they thought we should sound, which wasn't always what we thought we should sound. Now we tour with a small crew, but they work really hard and certainly make our jobs easier.
“I used guitar as a way of trying on boldness and brazenness and even conjuring some of the ugliness and uncertainty that I felt.” – Carrie Brownstein
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"But I'm glad that I have both perspectives, because I know how hard it is to tour and I know how fortunate we are to have it be even a little bit easier now.
One shift that affected the industry during Brownstein’s career was the influence of women in rock spaces. After spending much of her early career fighting to be seen as more than a “girl band,” Brownstein views this shift as refreshing.
“In the '90s, it certainly felt like we were climbing our way through and towards something and having to assert ourselves and, you know, kind of justify our existence,” she says. “Trying to not be considered anything other than a rock band. [...] But as the decades have gone on, there are more and more women who play music, who are at the forefront of the music industry. That kind of energy that we expended [...] trying to prove ourselves can now be expended on other things.”
Brownstein is inspired by several women currently making waves in the music industry. She lists Blondshell, Maggie Rogers and Ice Spice as artists she’s been listening to lately.
“It’s very encouraging and inspiring,” she says of women’s influence in the current music landscape. “It’s what you hope for. It’s just a flood and inundation of bands of all stripes and artists who are telling their stories."
In her time as a musician, Brownstein has made punk music as a teenage girl, a woman in her 40s and at every stage of life in between. Needless to say, she has faced the gamut of dismissive criticism.
“There will always be some, you know, naysayer or reason to not do something,” she says. “You're too young for that. You're too this or to that. Now you're too old.”
Time has given her the ability to tune it out and just focus on the music.
“I think 30 years allows an ability to contemplate and not react as much,” she says. “Because in the short term, sure, you can be very frustrated and angry. But then you just wait it out. [...] It sort of ebbs and flows a little bit, if that makes sense. Like, I try not to get caught up in it"
One thing time hasn’t done is make Brownstein jaded. She’s more grateful than ever to get to do what she loves.
“When I was younger, yes, I enjoyed it,” she says. “But I don't think I realized how lucky I was to be able to do that. And yeah, I just think I take most things for granted a lot less.”
Sleater-Kinney performs March 5, at The Studio at The Factory. Tickets start at $39.50 and are available on AXS.
