Sleater-Kinney slide into view. Thirty years after they first formed in the scuffle of the Nineties grunge scene in Olympia, Washington, the OG Riot Grrrls – recently hailed by Rolling Stone as “the best American punk band ever” – are at the other end of a video call from the US. Decades of intelligent rage have been pressed into the grooves of their 10 previous studio albums. We’re here to talk about the 11th, A Little Rope. It’s intense.
The band’s 51-year-old singer, Corin Tucker, is warm and relaxed in a grey hoodie; guitarist Carrie Brownstein – also the star and writer of the TV comedy Portlandia – is more restless, dressed in crisp, black lace. She leaves the call briefly to fetch herself a coffee. The press release for the album reveals that Brownstein’s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident in Italy in the autumn of 2022. The American embassy staff were unable to contact her because she had changed her phone number. Tucker was listed as her emergency contact on a passport form, and so they called her, leaving her to give the awful news to her bandmate.
