Riot grrrl pioneers Sleater-Kinney will tour Australia next month, bringing their aggressive sound they feel was missing in modern music.
Hailed as 'America's best punk band ever' by Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone, Sleater-Kinney returned to the music scene last year with the release of 'No Cities To Love', their eighth record since they formed in 1994.
This album came after an eight-year hiatus. The female punk trio of Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss spoke to PBS News last year explaining what they felt modern music was missing. "You hope and assume that the sphere will be filled by something else,” Carrie said.
“You want someone to take the torch and the sonic landscape of your band and explore that, and that really never happened.”
"It can be disappointing,” added Janet. “I did miss the urgency that we possess as a band, and I felt like a lot of music was feeling very much like hugs. Comforting, soft, non-threatening music. Which I don't relate to as much I do this sort of very visceral, physical music."
Nevertheless, Carrie expressed to Time Out (in February, 2015), her joy that modern pop music has a solid, feminist element to it. “I think some of the most interesting, exciting music is made by women right now. There are a lot of feminist ideals that have become pretty mainstream in the pop vernacular, whether it’s Beyoncé singing about motherhood or her relationships. She’s so strong and such a boss businesswoman!
“There’s a strength there that’s monolithic and impenetrable. And Taylor Swift is such a feminist now. Unabashedly feminist and her audience is young girls.”
As advocates of the punk movement, it is no surprise that their reformation had to be “organic” and not forced by any outside party or hunger for money. “It was never going to be someone approaching us or a Coachella offer,” Carrie told Time Out.
“It was never going to be this function that was driven by money or by something overly sentimental, like an anniversary. It was always going to be: 'would it feel good to play?'”
Live, the band seem to transcend the timid personas they portray in interviews and bring a raw and unapologetic energy that is synonymous with the punk and riot grrrl movements. “People might see us playing characters that are ferocious, dangerous and just downright ugly sometimes,” Corin said to The Guardian in March last year.
“When I started in Sleater-Kinney, I was pretty shy as a performer,” confessed Carrie during the same interview with The Guardian. “I was able to express myself, to get a sense of myself as larger than who I was. From then on, it was a lot of freedom.”
During the group's hiatus, Corin released two albums with the Corin Tucker Band, while Carrie and Janet released an album with Wild Flag. Carrie has been writing a book, 'Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl', and also co-created and stars in the TV series 'Portlandia', and Janet recorded and toured with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks.
Written by Liam Steers
Sleater-Kinney Tour Dates
Wed 2 Mar - Piaf Festival Gardens (Perth)Fri Mar 4 - HQ Complex (Adelaide)
Sat 5 Mar - The Triffid (Brisbane)
Sun Mar 6 - Sydney Opera House
Wed Mar 9 - The Croxton (Melbourne)
Thu Mar 10 - The Croxton (Melbourne)
