North American Tour Kicks Off In February 2024
Sleater-Kinney released Little Rope, their 11th studio album and first for Loma Vista on January 19. Little Rope is one of the finest, most delicately layered records in the band’s 30-year career, as evidenced by the album’s singles “Hell,” “Say It Like You Mean It” and “Untidy Creature.”
To call Little Rope flawless feels like an insult to its intent – it careens headfirst into flaw and brokenness – a meditation on what living in a world of perpetual crisis has done to us, and what we do to the world in return. On the surface, the album’s 10 songs veer from spare to anthemic, catchy to deliberately hard-turning. But beneath that are perhaps the most complex and subtle arrangements of any Sleater-Kinney record, and a lyrical and emotional compass pointed firmly in the direction of something both liberating and terrifying: the sense that the only way to gain control is to let it go.
Album stand-outs like “Hunt You Down,” “Needlessly Wild,” and “Dress Yourself” showcase the album’s interplay of lyrical and musical moods, which give the record an immense depth. Even the catchiest hooks are hiding something. The opening riff on “Hunt You Down “sounds a warning that smashes against a chorus delivered with a hint of deceptive sweetness: “The thing you fear the most will hunt you down” – a line Brownstein heard in an interview with a funeral director, said to him by a father preparing to bury his child. “Needlessly Wild,” starts out delicious, the single-syllable “wild” bending like taffy. But then the lyrics betray something a little more malicious, a little more marked by pain, and soon “I’m needlessly wild” festers into “I’m needless and wild, needless and wild.” Of “Dress Yourself,” which contains the lyrics “dress yourself in clothes you love for a world you hate,” Carrie Brownstein told The New Yorker “I think what kind of haunts me about that song is that I wrote the lyrics, exactly as they are now, before my mom died. The chorus is very much about the pain I have in my life. Or, a pain. A long-standing pain. Of depression, or a sense of feeling misplaced sometimes. It was surreal to have her die after I’d written it. It was like I’d gifted the song to myself beforehand.”
In the autumn of 2022, Carrie Brownstein received a call from Corin Tucker, who herself had just received a call from the American embassy in Italy. Years earlier, Brownstein listed Tucker as her emergency contact on a passport form, and while she had since changed her phone number, Tucker had not. The embassy staff were desperately trying to reach Brownstein. When they finally did, they told her what happened: While vacationing in Italy, Brownstein’s mother and stepfather had been in a car accident. Both were killed.
Although some of the album had already been written, aspects of each song—a guitar solo, the singing style, the sonic approach—were pulled into a changed emotional landscape. As Brownstein and Tucker moved through the early aftermath of the tragedy, elements of what was to become the emotional backbone of Little Rope began to form – how we navigate grief, who we navigate it with, and the ways it transforms us.
Little Rope was recorded at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, Oregon with GRAMMY-winning producer John Congleton.
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
February 28 – San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park
February 29 – Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl
March 1 – Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
March 2 – Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Theater
March 4 – Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
March 5 – Dallas, TX @ Studio at the Factory
March 6 – Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater
March 8 – New Orleans, LA @ Joy Theater
March 9 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
March 11 – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
March 12 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
March 13 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
March 14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
March 16 – New York, NY @ Racket *SOLD OUT*
March 17 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club *SOLD OUT*
March 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts *SOLD OUT*
March 20 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
March 21 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
March 22 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
March 23 – St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre
March 25 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman
March 26 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
March 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
March 29 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco
March 30 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
March 31 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
April 2 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
April 3 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
April 4 – Vancouver, BC @ The Vogue
April 5 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom *SOLD OUT*