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.
Lorincz: I love old stuff. Old machines, old styles of dress and especially old music. Growing up in Washington, D.C., in the ’70s and ’80s, the present was a plastic miasma of Reagan-era conservatism, synth-pop and disco on the radio and Moon Boots. When I heard “All Day And All Of The Night” on DC101, the local “hard rock” station, I ran out (well, took the bus) to the record store and bought the latest Kinks cassettes. Give The People What They Want didn’t sound much like what I’d heard, but I suppose it was a start.
So it was only natural that I drifted toward playing older styles of music, especially stuff from the ’60s. Eventually I ended up with a basement full of 45-year-old musical gear. It sounds and (maybe as importantly?) looks great, but it’s not exactly road-worthy. So why take it out? It’s not as if a room full of excited rock fans would demand a refund once they saw that the band was using reissued gear. “Dude! I am not paying $15 to see a show played on modern wave-soldered circuit boards! I thought this band was for real!”
But I can’t help it. My old, crappy gear is fragile and sometimes unfixable. But it gives me a special feeling, and I love its quirks. And for a handful of (typically male) rock geeks, it’s a treat. In Osaka, I tried to explain to a fan in my pitiful “tour Japanese” what my Echoplex was. I ended with “kakkoii?” (meaning “cool”?). He made my day when he replied: “Cho kakkoii!” (“Really cool!”).
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoOIPvopKrc
