This is Sleater-Kinney’s world, and we’re just living in it. The Pacific Northwest rock darlings of zine-laden punk are not only legends of local lore, but also admirably unafraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Since the outfit’s 1994 outset in Olympia, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein have been making fierce, unabashed, and in-your-face sounds that beg for progress. Now, three decades later, the times may have changed, but their social footprint remains, beckoning new generations of rule-breakers and misfits.
“I think we have a disregard for the musical rules,” Corin Tucker shares with me from a laptop screen. While I’m stationed in my Portland office, Sleater-Kinney is already on the road and headed up to Portland for their September 11 show at Edgefield, hot on the heels of their first tour shows with Liz Phair in Southern California. And while it’s clear that Tucker and her creative counterpart Brownstein most certainly do know the proverbial “rules” of music by now, they are still proponents of doing things their own way.
Hitting the road with Liz Phair (and rotating openers Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, and Frankie Cosmos) for the Flannel and the Fury 2026 tour is a fitting homage to feminist indie rock sensibilities of the past, present, and future. While Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair served up feminism on two different style platters, they both came up in a time when misogyny was a given in the industry and fought creatively against it, albeit in different ways. With many of these issues still present today, to share the stage now marks something monumental, not only nostalgic.
There is a certain urgency and perhaps a charming recklessness that’s borne of youth. In the early days before the likes of Sleater-Kinney, Tucker recalls seeing a stacked bill: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Calamity Jane one fateful night on February 14, 1991. “They were only a couple years older than I at the time, but they were really doing it. No holds barred, no waiting for formal musical training,” says Tucker. “I was like, ‘I want to do that. I want to be a part of this.” Tucker just began telling people she was in a band called Heavens to Betsy… before any music even existed yet. She laughs, “You have to create the world and believe in the world if you want other people to believe in it.”
And the world they created was characteristic of their experimental roots. “In the beginning, we both had so much to say. We would write overlapping vocal lines,” Tucker notes about the decidedly dissonant voice-collaged lyrics of early tracks. “It made us really unique, but I think when we restarted the band in 2015, we realized we could sing in unison and do harmonies.”
Much like the later-to-be illustrious Sleater-Kinney, Tucker’s Heavens to Betsy and Brownstein’s then-project Excuse 17 were foundational facets of the riot grrrl era. In the band’s early years, Sleater-Kinney threw out a self-titled release in ’95 ahead of the quintessential Call the Doctor (1996) and tour de force Dig Me Out (1997). Years later, after their seventh studio album The Woods (2005), the group took a hiatus wherein Brownstein worked on well-known Portland parody TV show, Portlandia, and Tucker led the Corin Tucker band. Sleater-Kinney returned after a dormant decade with No Cities to Love (2015), St. Vincent-produced Center Won’t Hold (2019), Path of Wellness (2021), and most recently, acclaimed work Little Rope (2024).
This latest iteration was born out of grief. An intimate expression of Brownstein’s mourning a personal tragedy and a portrait of the nuances of depression, Little Rope also holds a mirror to current political atrocities as right-wingers seek to strip human rights. The track “Crusador” acts as both a callout and an anthem in resistance, in support of queer and trans youth. With intimate titles articulating delicate details of desperation and despair, Sleater-Kinney offers slivers of hope throughout; a rally cry as Brownstein sings: “You’re never alone, we’re always with you now / The words, the beat, the sound”.
While those in office may have changed in the past 30 years, the public’s fear and disgust remains. Portland seems to be seeing a resurgence of that gritty DIY punk circuit, parallelling the scenes Sleater-Kinney came up in. With revulsion comes revolt.
“I do feel like there is a sense of real community… in the Pacific Northwest,” Tucker says. “That is the reason we were able to come up as a band. People asked us if we wanted to make a 7-inch or make a record… reaching out to one another in that small geographical bubble can be really nurturing for young, growing artists.”
Sleater-Kinney’s genre-expansive discography has stretched the bounds of punk, alt rock, and pop sensibilities, adding indelible and undefinable twists and tinges all their own. But at the heart of it, Sleater-Kinney’s own sonic world comes down to a raw sense of honesty. They are unabashedly themselves, whether on a small stage or a stadium, allowing others to be too. And in letting us into their world, we can envision a universe rife with vulnerability and care.
Sleater-Kinney will be sharing a stage with Liz Phair and Snail Mail at McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 SW Halsey, Troutdale, Friday, September 11, 6:30 pm, $47-$73.50, all ages.