On Beginnings
We just went down to the practice space and kind of worked on some ideas. We hadn’t played together for so long, it was kind of refreshing to be with someone who you had this shorthand with. So we just goofed around, and then we called Rebecca in, because I knew her and thought she’d be great for the soundtrack. We needed vocals, so we called Mary and she put some vocals on. It was very organic. It just sort of came together.”
On Women’s issues
“I guess I felt that things were changing by the end of Sleater-Kinney. I didn’t hear a whole lot of people talking about us as a ‘girl band’ anymore, you know. I do remember feeling like there was a certain shift, because we had been around and made so many records and accomplished so many things, so we had just become a band. In the mid- to late-’90s, it had been a lot different, we had been in the ‘women’s issue’ of a lot of magazines, which really annoyed me. It’s like a ghetto that we left in the ’90s. Good riddance.”
On Coachella
“Coachella was okay. I’m not a big Coachella fan. It was weird to be there for the second weekend. That seems sort of anti-climactic. We played right at sunset, and it was 106 degrees when we played that second weekend. That was challenging. I thought I was going to pass out.”
On Collaboration
“I’ve played in a lot of bands with different ways of collaborating. The Jicks were an interesting band, because Steve [Malkmus] will bring in a complete song, but he’ll want to try it with a bunch of different feels or tempos. I think that’s part of what’s interesting about being in a band, the choices that you make. Some people don’t want to collaborate, they want to tell you what to do, and that’s fine if they know what they’re talking about. It depends on what you want. Sometimes more choice is a good thing; sometimes it’s not. Sleater-Kinney was a unique thing, with two people kind of completing each other’s sentences. That’s rare. There’s no right or wrong. It’s just what works best.”
ON THE FANS
Lots of moms tell us ‘our little girls are obsessed with you guys.’ Maybe it’s because of our videos, which are really goofy. I don’t know. I like to think they have a little superhero quality to them. But a lot of our fans are like 50-year-old men. Honestly. Vinyl-collecting 50-year-old men who want to hear rock music, which isn’t being played by a lot of new bands.”
On Portlandia
“The interesting thing is that, because Carrie is on TV, lots of people come up to her now. I get a kick out of it. I would not be able to handle it personally. I think Portlandia has gone way further than she thought it would. There’s something nice about something that takes off in such an organic way. It was more of a challenge for scheduling our tour, but it ended up working out fine.”