Sleater-Kinney has rolled out an exciting new single, “Say It Like You Mean It,” with a video directed by Carrie Brownstein starring Succession’s J. Smith-Cameron. The track features an unforgettable, unadorned riff backing a raw examination of a relationship coming apart. It’s an exposed nerve ending of a song, and Smith-Cameron exudes unbridled truth when Corin Tucker sings “Say it like you mean it / I need to hear it before you go / Say it like you mean it / This goodbye hurts when you go.”
“The video tells the story of a woman who’s lost all sense of what’s appropriate,” Brownstein explains. “Sick with the alienation that stems from existing in a disparate emotional state from the person or people closest to her, she grapples with debilitating loss, desires to be seen, and dares you to leave.”
For the video, the band worked with Desert Island Studios, a minority-owned production company, studio facility, and membership collective working to remove barriers in the media industry for historically marginalized communities.
Last month the band announced their eleventh studio album, Little Rope, out January 19 via Loma Vista, with the a powerfully intimate “Hell.” The track was called “big, bold, ferocious and plainspoken,” by Paste Magazine, with the New York Times saying it“breaks wide open with anguish and inconsolable fury, as tolling, elegiac verses erupt into bitter power-chorded choruses. Corin Tucker unleashes her scream on the word ‘why.’”
Recorded at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, Oregon with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton, Little Rope is one of the most honest and soul-baring albums by one of modern rock’s most vital bands. Read Carrie and Corin’s interview with Rolling Stone, out today HERE.
‘Little Rope’ Track List:
1. Hell
2. Needlessly Wild
3. Say It Like You Mean It
4. Hunt You Down
5. Small Finds
6. Don’t Feel Right
7. Six Mistakes
8. Crusader
9. Dress Yourself
10. Untidy Creature
Sleater-Kinney is hitting the road in 2024 in support of Little Rope, beginning on Feb 28th in San Diego and including multiple nights in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Beforehand, the group will perform at Pitchfork Festival London on Nov. 10 and Corona Capital in Mexico City on Nov. 19. All dates below. Visit sleater-kinney.com for more information.
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.
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.
Sleater-Kinney Tour Dates:
11/10/2023 – London, UK @ Pitchfork London Roundhouse *SOLD OUT*
11/19/2023 – Mexico City, MX @ Corona Capital
02/28/2024 – San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park
02/29/2024 – Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl
03/01/2024 – Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
03/02/2024 – Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Theater
03/04/2024 – Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
03/05/2024 – Dallas, TX @ Studio at the Factory
03/06/2024 – Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater
03/08/2024 – New Orleans, LA @ Joy Theater
03/09/2024 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
03/11/2024 – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
03/12/2024 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
03/13/2024 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
03/14/2024 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
03/16/2024 – New York, NY @ Racket *SOLD OUT*
03/17/2024 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club *SOLD OUT*
03/18/2024 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts *SOLD OUT*
03/20/2024 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
03/21/2024 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
03/22/2024 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
03/23/2024 – St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre
03/25/2024 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman
03/26/2024 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
03/28/2024 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
03/29/2024 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco
03/30/2024 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
03/31/2024 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
04/02/2024 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
04/03/2024 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
04/04/2024 – Vancouver, BC @ The Vogue
04/05/2024 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
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