B-Sides: Sleater-Kinney Reloaded

“Indefinite hiatus” are two words you never want to hear from your favorite band. But when it comes to Sleater-Kinney, it means rad new rock projects rather than a riot grrl death knell.

The Corin Tucker Band is releasing their first album 1,000 Years on October 5th. Tucker joined forces with Sara Lund (Unwound) and Seth Lorinczi (Golden Bears) who Tucker played with at a benefit show last year.

The album is very lyrical, with slower tracks bringing out Tucker’s lyricism and vocals (Tucker told the Portland Mercury “There are definitely some ghosts on the record, too—ghost songs. There’s some sadness, some reinvention, some rebirth.”). As personal as it is, there’s some powerful accompaniment and the whole album tremors with electric anticipation that comes to a kick-ass climax with the song “Doubt.”

As for the other two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney, there’s news that Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein have joined up again as Wild Flag along with Rebecca Cole, who played with the Elephant 6 band The Minders and Mary Timony of the nineties’ Helium. Up until now, Brownstein had been flexing her comedy and blogging muscles (yes, there are blogging muscles) and scoring the upcoming documentary !Women Art Revolution on the feminist art movement, and Weiss has kept busy with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks (and dishing out drumming advice).

The collaboration with other indie female heavyweights isn’t out of the blue. Brownstein and Timony had a project the Spells, who recorded just a few but fun songs in 2000. According to the Guardian, Brownstein said “We all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts, not four disparate puzzle pieces trying to make sense of the other, but a cohesive and dynamic whole … We’re playing for ourselves but, of course, we’d love it if you listened.”

With such a stellar line-up, expect some wailing and dark-rocking. According to their Facebook page, their music is simply “What is the sound of an avalanche taking out a dolphin? What do get when you cross a hamburger with a hot dog? The answer is: WILD FLAG.” I can’t wait to hear some Wild Flag, and can’t wait for someone to make animated .gifs of those descriptions.