Cover Feature Sleater-Kinney: “How can you make something new if you think everything good has already happened?”

“I’m so self-conscious about birds!” exclaims Carrie Brownstein, suddenly. “There’s a dress I wanted to buy which had these little lovely birds on,” she qualifies, “and I was like, I just can’t. I ruined birds for my friends,” she sighs, with faux-regret, “and I’ve ruined birds for myself.”

Carrie Brownstein is notorious for many different outlets these days, from her parodies of pernickety feminist bookstore owners and chaffinch-adorned designer goods on US sketch show Portlandia, to the now-disbanded Wild Flag. When she walks down the street these days, she most likely hears “put a bird on it!” almost as frequently as shouts of “Sleater-Kinney!” Her bandmate Corin Tucker, too, wields a fearsome stand-alone reputation; her tuned-down guitar and vocal barrage of wild, unleashed vibrato unlike anything else on planet Earth, let alone the universe. Drummer Janet Weiss meanwhile has forged a path as an untouchably immediate musician and a force of pure, pummelling nature; both on Sleater-Kinney records, and with her other bands, Quasi and Wild Flag.

Today Corin Tucker snorts with derision when asked about that time Sleater-Kinney were proclaimed “America’s best rock band” by critic Greil Marcus. “Now we just want to be the greatest jazz band in America,” she laughs; “something to work towards on the next record,” archly quips Carrie in response. Likewise, Carrie is modest about the contribution to political dialogue that Sleater-Kinney made with albums like 2002’s ‘One Beat’, a record that arrived under the Bush administration and amid the grieving aftermath of 9/11. They’re more forthcoming about their ideological core feminism and social change; less so about their status as uncompromising flag bearers for the movement. Sleater-Kinney generally couldn’t give two hoots about being cornerstones of music past, or being remembered from eras long replaced by high street stores selling overpriced Beavis and Butthead t-shirts. They are a band that only exists in the present, and there is one word that Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker return to time and time again today. Relevancy.