♪ No one ♪
I can't-
- I can't hear you.
♪ It's not a new wave, it's just ♪
- I can't hear you,
This is like, this is the Spinal Tap of Zoom.
(laughing)
(upbeat rock music)
(rock music)
- This is Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney.
I play guitar and sing in the band.
- I'm Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney
and I also play guitar.
(Carrie plays loud guitar chord)
Sorry, Pete Townshend.
So we wanted to, yeah,
pick something that still had kind of the essential DNA
of Sleater-Kinney,
I guess it would be the mid-period of Sleater-Kinney.
- Yeah, we picked "A New Wave" from our record,
"No Cities to Love".
It was kind of a puzzle, this song, to figure out.
We did a lot of different like, demos,
and we tried a bunch of different things on it.
- Another reason we picked this song, like,
it seemed to kind of have a life of its own,
between the Letterman performance and Bob's Burgers,
it just kind of became this reintroduction
of the band to the world.
And so, I think it's one we hold like, close to our hearts.
I think this one started-
I'd been listening to Selda,
which is, you know, she was I think a Turkish guitar player
and super riff-based,
just really fuzzed-out,
kind of psych guitar player,
kind of like, shocking blue vocals, which I like,
you know, there's kind of like, a corrosive underbelly
and then this very like, harmonious like, top line.
And I love stuff like that.
- But the chorus of it,
to me, is almost like a Beatles song.
You know, because we do sing in unison,
which was like, a new thing for us, you know,
and it is kind of like this, this little drop away
from the crazy, like, psych stuff that's happening,
you know, almost like a sixties Beatles song.
- Surf riffs are kind of underrated
but I love the way that they have been reinterpreted.
Like Link Wray, or Gun Club, or the Cramps.
We can contrast it to something kind of dark and sinister.
That's my favorite use of that genre.
- Yeah. I think that there's like,
an influence of surf music,
especially like, Pacific Northwest bands,
but it became this like, heavier thing.
- And then obviously like, Kurt Cobain like,
was so influenced by the Wipers and like,
the "Come As You Are" riff is totally just like,
a cool surfy guitar riff
just kind of like, slowed down.
- Then I think that wave of things
really influenced our band.
(rock music)
Song writing can be just really instinctual
because it is super emotional.
You know, it's getting an idea across
and a mood across through music.
(rock music continues) I think that part
has to come first and foremost
over the lyrics.
I think when we took a break
and we came back, and we made "No Cities" we had had,
you know, kind of like,
eight years away from the band doing other things.
And so, you know, that gave us the time to look
at the big picture for songwriting a little bit, you know,
cause we started out so young.
- We used to write guitar first all the time.
And so I would write the lead
and then she would write the rhythm,
which is often the reverse of how some people write.
It's true of the song we're gonna to do today, "A New Wave".
Like, you know, it started
with the lead and then start writing the song around that.
- It did start out with Carrie's riff, which was incredible,
but it was a puzzle of like, how do we make room for this
and tell the story.
- When I listened to some of our older records
I can't believe how much melody is packed
into a song, like on "The Hot Rock".
I mean, Corin and I are both essentially playing leads.
And then we're both singing leads. (laughs)
Well, this is what playing is,
you just play all the notes all the time. (laughs)
It was like, we never made room for each other.
And I'm, I'm glad that those records exist.
I love those records, but I think something that we
learned later on was just, okay, look, we,
if one of us sits back, then your vocal melody could be
the main thing right there.
- It's something we've learned over so many years
of starting when we were both just like,
this is my part and I want to sing here,
And I'm going to sing here too, ya know.
(both laughing)
- A process of exploring other ideas is I think,
very important.
Like, no, we've tried all these other things.
This is the best one.
This is the one that we can't get out of our heads.
- This is a-
the oldest demo I've found
(rock guitar playing)
(Carrie plays along with recording)
- I can feel like, the excitement of coming back together.
Like, ya know, we haven't played in eight years,
and it kind of has that sort of like, manic energy
of our early records, ya know, where you're just like,
how many notes can I fit into this thing? (laughs)
And then I started singing. (laughs)
- What Carrie's doing is so frenetic.
It needed something like, repetitive, I think underneath.
(Corin plays guitar riff)
I had to just really simplify what I was doing.
I tried chords.
It didn't sound right.
(Corin continues playing guitar riff)
- [Carrie] Yeah. We uh, it was just what we had.
Neither of us played bass and neither of us wanted to.
And we only wanted to be a three-piece at the time. (laughs)
And then the chorus,
we probably wrote four or five choruses for this.
The chorus settles in.
(Carrie plays guitar chord)
What are you playing there, Corin?
You're playing chords, right?
- I'm just playing notes.
- You're just playing notes there?
- Yeah. I play notes the whole song.
- Yeah. I guess we, are just a really- we are just-
just a loud folk band. (laughs)
Neither of us decided to play chords. Okay.
(Carrie plays guitar)
So we're coming off that, like, singing,
and it like, settle-
then we're all singing together here.
Want to do that part, Corin?
♪ Eyes are the only witness ♪
♪ Die to prove we ever lived this ♪
♪ Invent our own kind of obscurity ♪
- To have this like Beatlesy chorus afterwards,
I was like, oh, this song is actually really, really fun,
you know?
After being such a puzzle.
Let's do the bridge.
(Corin plays guitar intensely)
(Carrie plays guitar slides)
- More slides.
(intense rock music) And so I think that bridge,
it just opens up the whole song.
It just kind of, there's no vocals over it,
because there's so much singing.
And so we wanted something that just kind of allowed
for this release.
And then you just play around there
and then you come back into the
(Carrie plays short guitar chords)
Which sounds like I'm playing a Who song.
Probably am.
Anyway, when it breaks down there, right,
it's like (playing guitar)
To me, like, when I think about this song it's like,
oh that's the moment where we got it.
I was like, okay.
We deserve this.
We get to like, have some fun in the middle of the song.
I think once you've told your story
we tend not to get into like a lot of gratuitous stuff.
That's what that fader's for.
- Which is like, and you're done.
- Although live I think it's different.
You can't do a cheesy fade-out live.
Just slowly, like, getting smaller and smaller,
turning the volume down.
So we did figure out an ending. (guitar playing)
Something like that.
- Yeah.
- Just four hits.
Usually I'm doing this there too.
I don't think I can do that right now.
(Carrie plays loud guitar chord)
You know, your classic ending. (laughs)