The first Corin Tucker Band album, 2010’s 1,000 Years, was dominated by moody, thoughtful songcraft—quite a left-turn coming after Tucker’s last album (to date) with groundbreaking trio Sleater-Kinney, 2005’s furiously distortion-heavy The Woods. But now, 1,000 Years’ follow-up, Kill My Blues (Kill Rock Stars), is another sonic shift. The guitars are louder, the textures more extreme, and Tucker’s lyrics on the album cover an amazing gamut—from clarion calls to teenage memories to more elliptical pieces. At times, the LP brings to mind S-K’s post-September 11 album, 2002’s One Beat, a collection of rock anthems for troubled times. Throughout Kill My Blues, Tucker writes—and the band plays—like something important is truly at stake on every song. The Corin Tucker Band—which also includes drummer Sara Lund, guitarist Seth Lorinczi and bassist Mike Clark (as well as touring bassist Dave Depper)—will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on the group.
Lund: I want to tell you about my friend Julianna Bright. In addition to being the “life partner” and baby mama of fellow CTB-er Seth Lorinczi, she is also one of the most talented, intelligent, thoughtful and fucking hilarious women I know. Every conversation I have with her, I come away feeling inspired and empowered. She has so many creative talents in her bag of tricks, it’s hard to pick what to write about.
I have to start with bad-ass drummer, for obvious reasons. And since she claims she learned to play drums listening to my old band, Unwound, on her Walkman, we are eternally bonded in that great drum circle in the sky. She also has a heart-wrenchingly beautiful singing voice. She has a band with Seth called Golden Bears that showcase both of these talents through their proggy, psych-ey, Small Faces-meets-Fairport Convention brand of rock. She also has this crazy new band with experimental hip-hop artist Alexis Gideon called Sleepheart that kind of sounds like Jay-Z and Beyonce, if they actually had something of substance to say.
In addition to being a musician (and mom), she is a visual artist/illustrator and is currently illustrating an interactive app for kids and is recording an album of kids’ music under the name Cat Doorman.
Discussing the journey from punk shows and art galleries to apps, Julianna says, “I’ve always approached art shows and projects from this perspective of, ‘I want to build a little universe.’ Like wanting to inhabit a space with imagery and something sonic, wanting to create part of a story that hits more than one of our senses.”
Luckily, her friends have a company called Night And Day Studios that makes interactive apps for kids. Having mostly done licensing work, they approached Julianna and asked if she would collaborate with them on original content. Excited at the chance to make something tactile with the look and feel of a real book, Julianna has done every illustration by hand in watercolor and ink. It’s called Little Red Wagon and is an adaptation of a classic kids’ song, though she changed the lyrics to tell the story of a little girl collecting provisions in her wagon to meet her friends for a picnic. The song was recorded with Chris Funk (Decemberists, Black Prairie) and sounds like a teddy-bear jug band.
And to top it all off, she is also hard at work on an illustrated song book that comes with a complete album of original kids songs she is recording with Seth and friends. The album will be released digitally along with the app, followed by the physical book. I’ll let Julianna describe it herself: “The songs are pretty deep self-empowerment jams, songs I realized midway through recording that I’d written to my little locked-up kid self all those years ago, the shy kid who couldn’t look a waiter in the eye until she was 25. So, yeah, art, music, transcendence—it’s kind of my totally perfect dream job.”
Video after the jump.
