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.
Tucker: I was recently listening to Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, a radio call-in show, when the host mentioned that yet another independent video store in Portland, Video Verite, would soon be going out of business. The host cited the online movie-streaming and delivery site Netflix, and I realized, “Right, we don’t really need video rental stores anymore, do we? Is it the same with records?” In the past couple of years, there has been a great resurgence of vinyl, which is fun, because it sounds so much better than CDs or listening to a record on the computer. (Yuck.)
But is being a musician—more specifically, an independent musician—and making records still a viable career option? Independent labels have struggled with the advent of mp3s and filesharing. Lookout! Records folded, and many other labels like Touch And Go have had to restructure their business drastically. But everyone is still listening to new music. There is still a demand for the work that musicians are producing. Unfortunately, the truth is a lot of people illegally download the music (say, on Youtube) instead of buying physical copies of it.
What should musicians do to make money from their music? License it to ads selling cars or beer? That’s a common answer for bands these days. But if I wanted to sell cars I could have gotten a job as a salesperson. I’m not here to sell crap. I was really inspired by Radiohead’s idea for their last album. No label, no CDs, and no price tag. Pay, via internet, what you think you should for our music. It was a big idea.
We need more big ideas if independent musicians are going to survive. What about a union of independent musicians that stick together? We would have a lot more leverage fighting for a decent amount of money from downloads (iTunes, Spotify) if there were more than one act working together. I do think we need a new business model, one that pays musicians based on actual recordings downloaded and listened to, one based on fairness and the reality of our new, uncomfortable, digital age.
Video after the jump.
