Basil Childers
Sleater-Kinney: (from left) Janet Weiss, Carrie Brownstein, and Corin Tucker.
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Sleater-Kinney are on a merry-go-round.
This isn't intended as metaphor, or clever journalistic gambit. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss are, literally, straddling ponies, horses, and zebras as the mad-happy din of carousel music plays them round and round.
Dispatched to interview rock celebs, one assumes the circumstances of the meeting will fit the image of the artist; you'd hardly expect to go fly-fishing with Marilyn Manson, go thrifting with P-Diddy, or attend The Vagina Monologues with Eminem. Yet here we are—Sleater-Kinney and I—in the middle of a mirthful Oregon afternoon, enjoying all sorts of games, rides, and confections at Portland's Oaks Amusement Park.
"Who wants cotton candy?"
It seems an almost impertinent question to ask a band oft-characterized as the self-serious, puritanically intense, chippy ideologues of indie rock.
And, besides, they want corn dogs.
It's been two years since Sleater-Kinney's last album, one year since Time magazine crowned them "America's Best Rock Band." If the recognition felt premature then, the impending release of One Beat makes it play like prophecy. The band's sixth long player is a dark, sprawling opus, an inexorable rumble of song that outstrips its predecessors by a mile.
This isn't the same group who sang "I Want to Be Your Joey Ramone." It's 2002: Joey Ramone is dead, the world's on fire, and rock 'n' roll has to find a way to stay meaningful in a post-Sept. 11 world.
That's a challenge few care to take on; certainly no one among the cute, color-coordinated, retro-rock brigade is up to meeting it. But S-K have elected to tackle the task—damn the consequences.
One Beat is so loaded with both political portent and guttural power you expect ivory tower academics and blue-haired punkettes alike to proclaim the record manna from the Northwest: rock's salvation arriving in well-worn Riot Grrrl rags.
But fans and critics have always invested Sleater-Kinney with an inordinate amount of expectation, even if sales of all their albums combined are roughly equal to what 'N Sync might move on a good afternoon. Until now, however, Sleater-Kinney's aims were too limited for them to truly be worthy of inheriting the "only band that matters" mantle. Their music, similarly, didn't warrant such distinction. For all the talk of their originality, they sometimes sounded like the pre-makeover Go-Gos, playing punk in '79. Not the worst reference point ever, but certainly not the stuff of savior status.
One Beat changes all that, dramatically. By turns a dissident manifesto, protest album, polemic, and sweet '60s soul kiss, it's a record at last worthy of the breathless praise heaped on them these many years.
Arriving for the photo shoot and chat, Sleater-Kinney are a fastidiously styled bunch: Tucker, a cherub in pigtails and sailor stripes; the solemn, raven-haired Weiss in a sleek uniform of all black; the convivial Brownstein clad in sharp white slacks and navy blue tee.
You might wonder at this point what a man is doing interviewing them at all; don't Sleater-Kinney have some standing policy about only talking to female reporters? Pure fiction, they insist. Indeed, much of the day is spent correcting the half-truths and outright lies spread about the band.
If certain segments of the media have been quick to canonize them, others have sought equally to marginalize their work; the press circa '97's Dig Me Out often barely mentioned the music, instead trawling for dirt on the band's sexuality and personal lives.
Such reactions aren't surprising. This is, after all, a group of unapologetically truculent and aggressive ladies—a band that shunned multiple major-label suitors to stay with its hometown indie. Behavior like that doesn't go unpunished in an industry that prefers its women to be canny armchair liberationists—publicly assertive but docile in the boardroom.
Sleater-Kinney clearly relish their abrasive rep. Tucker likes to tell the story of one early show, where she so enraged the soundman that he shut off the P.A. mid-set. Brownstein happily recalls Bryant Gumbel's on-air fit of pique—"Sleater who? Who is this band"—after reading the Time plaudits. And then there's Weiss, once accosted by a hectoring Courtney Love, adamant that Sleater-Kinney were throwing it all away by not going for the big brass ring. Weiss informed the widow Cobain, in the most polite terms possible, that she should stick her notion of "success" and crawl back into her Hole.
"We've never allowed other people to trivialize what we're doing," says Tucker. Her tone suggests they're not about to start anytime soon.
We are a conspicuous-looking crew: three grown women waiting to slide down a giant lapping tongue called "The Big Pink," a 6-foot, tassel-haired photographer shadowing their every move, and me, standing guard over a heap of purses, bags, and jackets.
As Sleater-Kinney take turns plunging for the camera, a young father with a 5-year-old son in tow looks on curiously.
"So I gotta ask," he finally says, turning to me, "are they a band or something?"
"Yeah, they're called Sleater-Kinney."
Abruptly forgetting that he's surrounded by toddlers, the man unexpectedly explodes.
"Holy shit, I just bought their album last week! No fuckin' way! Honey," he says, flagging down his clearly embarrassed wife, "it's fuckin' Sleater-Kinney!"
