Six months after hinting at a new project, two members of Sleater-Kinney have revealed their new band – and it's got terrific indie cred. Drummer Janet Weiss and singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein have announced the formation of Wild Flag, reuniting not just with each other but with late-90s heroines Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole.
According to their Facebook page, Wild Flag is "the sound of an avalanche taking out a dolphin". Or, if you prefer, "[what] you do when you cross a hamburger with a hot dog". Although they're recording their debut in early 2011, they've already announced a string of live dates in western US. And we are counting the minutes until they are booked for an upcoming All Tomorrow's Parties festival.
Let's have a look at those indie-rock CVs. Brownstein and Weiss co-founded Sleater-Kinney, who have been on indefinite hiatus since 2006. Brownstein is now a journalist; Weiss plays with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus. Timony made her splash as the frontwoman of Helium, who with their steely weirdness epitomised one facet of the late-90s American underground. She has released four solo albums. Cole, meanwhile, played drums in the Minders, jangling loudly in Denver and beyond. Wild Flag's members have collaborated in acts like the Spells and the Shadow Mortons and, they explained, "if someone drew a visual representation illustrating the ways in which all indie bands are interconnected ... [we] would be in the same, tiny sphere".
But according to a blogpost by Brownstein, "Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe'."
"After a handful of practice sessions spread out over a period of months," she writes, "I think we all realised that we could be greater than the sum of our parts, not four disparate puzzle pieces trying to make sense of the other, but a cohesive and dynamic whole ... We're playing for ourselves but, of course, we'd love it if you listened."
