"It sounded like the future!" Corin Tucker on a Sonic Inspiration from Childhood
Can you imagine a world in which a frankly kind of dumb toy inspires one of the greatest voices in rock? Sound Surrounds returns with the indelible voice of Sleater-Kinney.
I’m going to trust Corin Tucker requires little introduction.
As one half of Sleater-Kinney, Corin possesses one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in rock. Over the course of some eleven studio albums, the band has played an outsized role in defining, refining, and reconfiguring the parameters of “alternative rock.” And in this installment of Sound Surrounds, she remembers a very early sonic memory that helped shape who she is as an artist today….
Seth: So, what’s your sound?
Corin: Okay, so this is such a ‘70s reference, and I’m hoping that you know what I’m going to talk about, because I don’t know how far this got across the country. My early childhood was spent in Grand Forks, North Dakota—very Midwestern, you know, such a kind of basic childhood. There was just…there was not a lot going on. I look back on my childhood and we were outdoors all the time, just running around.
We lived by the river, and there just wasn’t a lot of things to play with. But I remember this plastic tube that came out in the ‘70s and you whipped it around and it made this crazy sound that was like…I thought it was magic. I thought it was like the craziest sound ever. I was like, How is it doing it? What is that noise? It was different than anything I’d ever heard, and it just sounded otherworldly to me. It sounded like the future. It was just about inventing a cool sound. [This was] before I ever heard, like, synthesizers or anything.
Seth: What year is this? This is like…
Corin: I don’t know, like ’76 or ’77? I don’t even know if I had heard punk music. But I loved hearing this weird sound that was just sound for sound’s sake, you know? We just did it all the time: Make that cool noise again!
Seth: It also just makes me think of like just a time in childhood—and, I suppose, in modern history—when that was enough!
Corin: Exactly. Do it again!
Seth: Is there a visual that came with that? Did you actually see a future?
Corin: It just sounded like a tunnel to me, of going somewhere, and translating a feeling.
Seth: Do you feel like some of those early sounds have come back to you in music?
Corin: It’s this idea of experimenting with sound. I think about Dig Me Out as being this record that we experimented on, and credit to (producer) John Goodmanson, because he was advocating for us to experiment. Even the feedback you hear on that record—there’s like this whooshing sound of feedback that makes you kind of feel sick to your stomach but it’s pushing your emotions somewhere, it’s asking a question, you know, and it was like—again, it was sound for sound’s sake. It was pushing buttons, and I think back to that early sound, and I think that was enough for me, that was enough to use those sounds to ask questions, to feel emotions and to push things forward.
Seth: I’m not a sports person, but there’s something about listening to a baseball game on the radio and all the details you have to fill in with your mind. You’re just in this sound and it’s pushing you somewhere, but you have to invent the rest of it.
Corin: I think it was so important for me as a kid to have that kind of audio stimulation and extrapolating where could you go with that. What is this about, where did it come from, whose idea was this? And where could it lead, and what could you do with it? I just think that that is such a cool concept, in terms of being a composer, I just think that’s kind of the building block of making a song, really.
Seth: Did you ever write a song based on a single sound, like something happened and you’re like: Oh, let’s make a song based on that one thing!
Corin: Not necessarily one single sound, but a single riff? Yeah, yes, 100%! I remember when Carrie and I decided to go to Australia for some reason, and we were staying at Laura McFarlane’s flat in Melbourne, and she started playing that riff for “Be Yr Mama,” which is three notes, and I was in the other room, and I was like: “Don’t stop playing!”
I was running from the other room to grab my guitar, but it was just like, boom, it was like the song was there, it already happened, it was all there. I mean, that’s the chemistry that we have as songwriters, is she can play something like that, and I suddenly the rest of the song kind of explodes in my head.
I mean, when you talk about early audio experiences, I was so fortunate because my parents, especially my dad, but both my parents have such great taste in music. I had the Velvet Underground on in the background, I had Bob Dylan….
Seth: That checks out.
Corin: I had all this stuff that I so took for granted and was such a brat about for so long. I was, like: Duran Duran! Because you know, your parents’ music is garbage, because that’s the only way you have to differentiate yourself! It’s only now that I’m like: Oh, you know, maybe their taste in music wasn’t so terrible after all, and played a large role in shaping me as an artist.
Seth: When my daughter was just getting into pop, I was very careful not to push my own tastes on her. But one day when she was 15, she was like: So…what’s the deal with the Velvet Underground?
Corin: There’s this collaboration between John Cale and Charlie XCX, which is great. I highly recommend it. I mentioned it to my daughter, and she was like: “Oh yeah, for Wuthering Heights. Who’s John Cale?”
And I was like, “He’s some old guy, he was in this band the Velvet Underground.” Meanwhile, there’s like a huge Velvet Underground poster on our wall! So we listened to John Cale the other night, and he’s in his 80s….
Seth: I don’t know how he’s made it this far, given his drug intake, but…
Corin: Did you read the thing in the New York Times about the Horses 50th anniversary? No, it’s…actually, it’s from Patti’s book. She writes about Cale producing [that record]. It’s so interesting because it talks about him being actually really disciplined, and her being like: No, no, no, no, I want to improvise the whole thing, including the lyrics! And him being: That’s impossible, that doesn’t make any sense!
And she was really stubborn, and she was like: No, I’m gonna do it. And they do it, and in the end he’s like: “Fuck, it’s incredible.”