You just want someone to step forth with honesty.

Like, to me that it has such a weight to it. You know, even in 'Say It Like You Mean It,' like, there's a freedom in having someone say it. Say the things you need to actually say to that person while you have the time together.īROWNSTEIN: The counterpart to me to that sense of restlessness and urgency is that you also hit, like, the high points, too. And I know it sounds like it's a downer, but it's meant to actually be sort of, live life while you have it. TUCKER: You know, that goodbye is coming at some point. SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Say it like you mean it. And some of it is sad, and some of it is angry because that's kind of the price you pay for loving someone. And, you know, it kind of is meant to take the listener on a journey. TUCKER: We all have to say goodbye at some point. SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Go softly with me. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, 'SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT') SIMON: Let me ask you about another track, 'Say It Like You Mean It.' (SOUNDBITE OF SLEATER-KINNEY SONG, 'SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT')') It's something to repeat and a ritual that I really understood. And I think when you are thrust into a place that is incoherent, music - it's words. And the ritual of placing my hands on the guitar neck and the fretboard - that was a solidity. Playing guitar is something I've done since I was in my teenage years. As everything around me was misshapen, music - it was a form that I knew. First, how are you doing? And was music a kind of light that helped guide you out of darkness?īROWNSTEIN: Well, I'm OK as, you know, anyone is or can be after sort of the structure of your life is dismantled in a really sudden way. Your mother and stepfather died in a car accident. SIMON: Carrie Brownstein, hope you don't mind - I have to ask you about a tough period you went through just a couple years ago, even less.

SIMON: And, Carrie Brownstein, how are you dealing with it emotionally? I mean, the - some of the lyrics are just overwhelming.īROWNSTEIN: For me, the song 'Hell' is about embracing the mess, reconstituting and kind of reclaiming it, you know, not thinking of it as a place to banish oneself but a place to to reform ourselves, a place to just come to terms with, I think, some of the realities and, and the ugliness and maybe transform that into something that's powerful. And so it's really meant to be a metaphor about living with that and feeling like it's - you know, it's taking up space in our everyday life and just, you know, having a moment to sort of reckon with that.

TUCKER: I think that song kind of came from a moment of revelation about the kind of culture of violence that we live with in the United States and how we've come to sort of normalize it as something that is an everyday occurrence. Why did you want to do a song about hell? Corin Tucker? Yeah, please. I mean, there are more songs about, you know, New York, Chicago, heaven for that matter. You don't hear a lot of songs about hell.

Thanks so much for being with us.ĬARRIE BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having us, Scott. SIMON: And we're joined now by those two musicians, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, both in Portland. SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) You ask why like there's no tomorrow. Thirty years later, Sleater-Kinney is out with its 11th album, 'Little Rope.' SIMON: They took a name that was right in front of them, Sleater-Kinney, from the interstate exit closest to their practice space. Hell is just a signpost when you take a certain path. SLEATER-KINNEY: (Singing) Hell don't have no worries. In the mid-1990s, two young guitarists in Washington state began to play together in their time off from other bands.

Just two of us guitar chords