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Theres always an intense emotionality to our music.
Its not really a place where we feel limitations.
Mind you, this isnt a sonic equivalent of the Kubler-Ross model.
Sometimes thats howling and sometimes thats humor.
Youre welcoming us to this omnipresent, uniting hell.
Its going to a lot of different places of loss, struggle, and resistance.
Its meant to be an intense journey as an album.
But I also think those lines have a freedom to them, because theres nowhere left to go.
It puts a listener on a precipice of potential liberation.
We dont want to be obtuse, necessarily.
In certain options, where you should have more restraint, you feel histrionic.
And then in moments where youre called upon to be more open, you feel detached.
I just kept circling around these words,needlessly wild, needlessly wild.
Then you get that agitation.
The whole idea of a chorus is that were singing it and experiencing something together.
I love the Ramones second verse is the same as the first method.
Theres this clarity of purpose there.
Theres something joyous about that simplicity.
Each time you say it, it can mean something else, which is like meditation.
Youre bringing your whole experience to a single sentence.
What were your peak needlessly wild years?CT:The 1997 European tour.
I was needlessly wild.
I did a lot of those behaviors on repeat.
Yeah, I lived it and did it.
CB:Im a late bloomer.
Mine is a little later.
I would put mine in 2017 and 2018.
I had outsize and inappropriate emotions to commensurate to what everyone else around me wanted.
Carrie, you described this as a woman who loses sense of whats appropriate.
I need this immediately.
Theres a jubilance to this song thats not apparent to those just reading the stanza.
Corin sent me a very rough version of it.
There was music on the verses and the music already had such a hook.
When the chorus came, I just thought, Oh, this is a classic song.
I think something that feels anthemic either just possesses that quality or doesnt.
How do these shards of humor make their way into your songs?
You just start expressing these weird, dark thoughts.
I love wit and humor in songs.
Not so much silliness, but something that serves as a counterpoint to something thats more depressing overall.
An idea thats repeated here is what you fear the most will hunt you down.
There are a lot of songs about saying good-bye, loss, and losing that connection with people.
As you get older, its more a part of your life than when you were younger.
Its really hard to keep going.
It reorganizes your world.
Just a sense of alienation that things will become unrecognizable, including oneself.
That is such an existential fear.
Theres a lot of bargaining on this album.
Theres a lot of begging.
Music, creativity, friends, and seeing resistance and resilience those give me hope.
We recently did these in-person signings of our record with fans in the middle of two crazy storms.
People came out in person and were like, Your music really means something to me.
CB:Were not true optimists, but were not cynics either.
Generally I attempt to look out with some positivity.
Otherwise, you cant go on.
We cant get onstage if we dont believe in the ability of music to bring people together.
All of the joy, spontaneity, and frivolity that happens in a live setting?
Thats the stuff we live for.
CB:Little rope is a signifier of ones darkest, most despairing moment of wanting to disappear.
But its also what pulls you from that and what binds you to someone else.
You could buy coffee and also pay to have a moment with a cat.
CB:The cats were all up for adoption.
Sometimes we would go in and were told, No cats today, sorry, theyre not feeling it.
I drive out to the country and hang out with mostly women and their dogs.
I love stuff like that.
Its like youre texting back a friend whos concerned about you.
I knew I wanted the tempo to be fast.
It has that repetitive guitar line that keeps things moving.
We all feel that when were steeped in despair.
You get it in your head, like, Im undeserving of people being around.
yo leave me alone.
That givesmestrength to see her acting with that kind of courage.
In a time where a lot of people would not be able to keep going, she did.
In the process of making this album, it was fun to see some of her feistiness come back.
We were so young and she always seemed intimidating.
I saw that a little bit again.
I was like, Oh, yeah, this is very cool.
Is she haunting someone?once you nail decades of fury coming out, its going to be big.
Thats how Six Mistakes comes across.
Its like, lets not pussyfoot around here.
Was there one inciting event that encouraged you to write this song?
The hypocrisy and the cruelty was so glaring.
More broadly, its about those literal trespasses and psychic trespasses upon bodies.
No matter how hard people try, you cannot legislate against hearts, words, and art.
You still have to write a good song and a good melody.
Weve had Planned Parenthood and we support queer youth centers in Portland.
I loved the song and I was happy with the lyrics.
I couldnt believe it suddenly was so obvious what it was now about.
It had never been about my mom dying.
But it was never singing to someone who was no longer there.
That was really intense.
Sometimes the meaning of it shows up later, and thats okay.
Take a song like Whats Mine Is Yours.
But live, its so fun and wild.
Its like this very ridiculous character that people enjoy.
It feels like an act of anger can become a celebratory thing.
CB:Modern Girl has definitely taken on different permutations for me.
I wrote that song during a brief stint where I lived in Northern California.
It was the first time I lived in California as a Pacific Northwesterner.
I found the glare of the sun and the incessant blue sky very alienating.
Then when I started doingPortlandia, I thought of the verse, TV brings me closer to the world.
That was so weird.
When I wrote the song, it was about watching television as a means of feeling less alone.
Now Im on TV and there was almost an irony to the entire song.
Its essentially adapted to who I am.
But, as Carrie said, both of us have a little bit of optimism in us.
That is a way of picking a lock.
That is a way of getting through.
CB:Theres some defiance there.
Its a conversation thats been happening for a long time between us.
It feels like weve said all there is a say, but theres the promise of more to come.
Theres not a lot of precedent.
We dont see a lot of folks ahead of us to guide us with whats happening.
Its an unsustainable career and more so now because of streaming and the devaluing of art.
When people dont want to pay for things, then its hard to keep making them.
