Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein is opening about up a family tragedy. On Tuesday, Oct. 3, the actress and singer revealed that her mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident while vacationing in Italy in 2022, a tragedy that helped inspire Brownstein and Corin Tucker’s musical duo Sleater-Kinney’s 10th studio album, Little Ropes.
Set to be released on Jan. 19, the album was written in a place of mourning and meditation, Brownstein revealed, sharing the heartbreaking news that in autumn 2022, she learned of the tragedy in Italy. Brownstein said that after her mother and stepfather’s deaths, the American Embassy attempted to reach out to her, but were unable to contact her as she had since changed her phone number. Because Tucker was listed as her emergency contact on a passport form, the embassy called Tucker instead, who then called Brownstein with the heartbreaking news.
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At the time, some of the album had already been written, aspects of each song, including a guitar solo, the singing style, and sonic approaches, were heavily influenced by Brownstein’s grief. Reflecting on that period of time, Brownstein told the Associated Press, “I just needed to feel my fingers on something that was solid. When people leave this Earth, you are aware of what is still here, and what is tactile versus what you’ll never touch again.” What resulted was the backbone of Little Ropes – “how we navigate grief, who we navigate it with, and the ways in which it transforms us,” per a press release.
Among the songs on the album is “Hell,” which was recorded at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, Oregon with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. Tucker said the song drops “us in a place and a time and a feeling and an emotion of helplessness and frustration,” according to Tucker, who added, “And revelation: of how much control we had conceded at that present moment in time. It became a symbol of how deeply in crisis we are, right? As human beings, as the planet, in terms of the violence in our culture. I think it is pretty specific to America and who we are.”
Brown said the song is “an exploration of the liminal, of sort of being between two states of, like, you know, joy and grief, or alive and dead, high-low… a precipice, the idea of precarity.” Brownstein noted of the album, “a lot of these songs were written before I lost my mom, but her death informed the process as much as it informed the actual content of the songs.” Reflecting on the creation of the album and her grief, Brownstein said, “Playing music is really important for the process of living with grief.” The pair described the album as “raw.”
Little Ropes, which features 12 songs, is set to be released on Jan. 19. Sleater-Kinney are set to play London’s Pitchfork festival and perform in Mexico City next month, with tickets for their 2024 North American tour set to go on sale this Friday.
