Carrie Brownstein
Carrie Brownstein
Carrie Rachel Brownsteinis an American musician, writer, actress, and comedian. She first came to prominence as a member of the band Excuse 17 before forming the punk-indie trio Sleater-Kinney. During a long hiatus from Sleater-Kinney, she formed the group Wild Flag. During this period, Brownstein wrote and appeared in a series of comedy sketches with Fred Armisen which were then developed into Emmy and Peabody Award-winning satirical comedy TV series Portlandia. Sleater-Kinney has since reunited and Brownstein is touring with...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth27 September 1974
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
I'm kind of a hermit - it's almost easier for me to write about connection than to actually connect.
I've realized that I have a lot of different loves, and I want to pursue writing, but I can never divorce myself from music.
It does feel great to be writing, but the process is sometimes excruciating.
I've mostly been focusing on writing, and I've really enjoyed not playing music. It will always be part of my life, but I don't feel the immediate need to be playing for people.
I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring.
It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.
Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It's cliche to write that, but it's true.
A lot of music for me was about - I mean aside from the fun and challenge of writing and being really good friends with my bandmates - getting to perform.
There was a clarity to the Nineties. It was pre-9/11, before that anxiety kicked in that exists right now about the financial crisis or terrorism. We were all just going to move forward into the millennium and everything was always going to get better. Then, whoops, that didn't happen.
I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or a political musician. It becomes this thing where somehow your art can no longer exist on its own and be multifaceted.
As a kid, before I got into music, I did all the drama classes, went to theater camp in the summers, so it wasn't totally a foreign world.
I think it's very disheartening and undermining to focus on nostalgia or youthful sentimentality as the lens through which you view art and culture, because then you feel like everything good already happened. I really just try to be in the present with music and just find the things that are invigorating and make me feel happy to be alive right now.
I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.
What I value most in new music is strangeness, oddity. Passion. And humor. I listen to a lot of hip-hop because it combines so many things like that.