Music 2006.
Excuse 17 While attending Evergreen, Brownstein met fellow students
Corin Tucker,
Kathleen Hanna,
Tobi Vail, and
Becca Albee. With Albee and CJ Phillips, she formed the band
Excuse 17, one of the pioneering bands of the
riot grrrl movement in the
Olympia music scene that played an important role in
third-wave feminism. Excuse 17 often toured with Tucker's band
Heavens to Betsy. The two bands contributed to the
Free to Fight compilation. With Tucker, she formed the band
Sleater-Kinney as a side project and later released the split single
Free to Fight with
Cypher in the Snow.
Sleater-Kinney After both Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy split up, Sleater-Kinney became Brownstein and Tucker's main focus. They recorded their first self-titled album in early 1994 during a trip to Australia, where the pair were celebrating Tucker's graduation from Evergreen, and Brownstein still had three years of college left. It was released the following year. They recorded and toured with different drummers, until
Janet Weiss joined the band in 1996. Following their eponymous debut, they released six more studio albums before going on indefinite hiatus in 2006. In a 2012 interview with
DIY magazine, Brownstein said that Sleater-Kinney still planned to play in the future. On October 20, 2014, Brownstein announced on Twitter that Sleater-Kinney would be releasing a new album,
No Cities to Love, on January 20, 2015, and would tour in early 2015. At the same time the announcement was made, they released the video for the first single from the album. The single, "Bury Our Friends", was also made available as a free MP3 download. Critics
Greil Marcus and
Robert Christgau deemed the band one of the essential rock groups of the early 2000s. In 2015,
Stereogum Chief Editor Tom Breihan called them the greatest rock band of the past two decades.
Other work Brownstein and former
Helium guitarist/singer
Mary Timony, recording as The Spells, released
The Age of Backwards E.P. in 1999. Also in 1999, Brownstein,
Lois Maffeo, and
Peter Momtchiloff released a single ("The Touch"/"Louie Louie Got Married") on
K Records as The Tentacles. In mid-2009, Brownstein and Weiss worked together on songs (produced by
Tucker Martine) for the soundtrack of the documentary film
!Women Art Revolution by
Lynn Hershman Leeson. In September 2010, Brownstein revealed her latest project was the band
Wild Flag, with Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, and Rebecca Cole, formerly of
The Minders; according to Brownstein, about a year earlier, "I started to need music again, and so I called on my friends and we joined as a band.
Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe, a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts." They released a
self-titled album in September 2011. In 2011, Wild Flag toured for a second time and played at
CMJ Music Marathon. By 2014, the band was no longer active.
Accolades In 2006, Brownstein was the only woman to earn a spot in the
Rolling Stone readers' list of the 25 "Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time".
Writing Brownstein began a writing career before Sleater-Kinney broke up. She interviewed
Eddie Vedder,
Mary Lynn Rajskub,
Karen O, and
Cheryl Hines for
The Believer magazine. Brownstein has also written a couple of music-related video game reviews for
Slate. From November 2007 to May 2010, Brownstein wrote a weblog for
NPR Music called "Monitor Mix"; she returned for a final post in October, thanking her readers and declaring the weblog "officially conclude[d]". In March 2009, Brownstein was contracted to write a book to "describe the dramatically changing dynamic between music fan and performer, from the birth of the
iPod and the death of the record store to the emergence of the 'you be the star' culture of
American Idol and the ensuing dilution of rock
mystique"; The book, called
The Sound of Where You Are, was planned to be published by
Ecco/
HarperCollins. Brownstein's memoir,
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, was released on October 27, 2015. The book was published by
Riverhead Books, an imprint of
Penguin Books USA. In 2020,
Ann Wilson, lead singer of hard rock band
Heart, announced in an interview that Brownstein was writing the script for a Heart biographical film.
Acting attended the
2011 Peabody Awards. Their series
Portlandia earned the award for
Broadway Video and
IFC. Brownstein has acted (what she calls a "mere hobby") in the short film
Fan Mail, the experimental feature
Group, and the
Miranda July film
Getting Stronger Every Day. Brownstein and
Fred Armisen published several video skits as part of a comedy duo called ThunderAnt. She starred opposite
James Mercer of
The Shins in the 2010 independent film
Some Days Are Better Than Others. The film had its world premiere at
SXSW on March 13, 2010. After their ThunderAnt videos, Brownstein and Armisen developed
Portlandia, a
sketch comedy show shot on location in Portland, for the
Independent Film Channel. The two starred in the series and wrote for it with co-creator
Jonathan Krisel, a
writer for Saturday Night Live. The show, which featured appearances of some of the characters from ThunderAnt, premiered in January 2011. The series received positive feedback and concluded after its eighth season in 2018. From 2014 to 2019, Brownstein played the role of Syd in the
Amazon Studios original series
Transparent. In 2015, Brownstein portrayed Genevieve Cantrell in the
Todd Haynes film
Carol, based on
Patricia Highsmith's novel
The Price of Salt. However, the majority of her scenes were cut due to the film's length. The film had its world premiere at the
Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2015. It began a
limited release on November 20, 2015. Brownstein was a guest on
Saturday Night Live,
Curb Your Enthusiasm, and
Man Seeking Woman, among other shows. Brownstein starred in and wrote the screenplay for
The Nowhere Inn, a 2020 tour mockumentary thriller, with Annie Clark (
St. Vincent).
Filmography ==Personal life==