Sleater-Kinney have shared “Untidy Creature,” another single from their upcoming album Little Rope.
“Untidy Creature” is a slower pace than the average Sleater-Kinney tune, but it keeps up the energy with a cacophony of booming electric guitars: “And it feels like we were broken/ And I’m holding the pieces so tight/ And you can try to tell me I’m nothing/ And I don’t have the wings to fly.”
“‘Untidy Creature’ was the first song we wrote for Little Rope, although we didn’t know it at the time; we weren’t certain we were even working on another record,” the band said in a press release. “We also worried it had come too easy, the song featured two elements that come very naturally to Sleater-Kinney: a big guitar riff, an even bigger vocal. But as the year wore on, and our choices and bodily autonomy shrank, our feeling about the song changed. It became a gift, somewhere to put our darkest fears, and our deepest hopes. We sometimes feel trapped or angry, and yet still we breathe.”
To tie the music video into the themes of the song, Sleater-Kinney tapped Australian freediver Amber Bourke, holding her breath underwater in a bathtub. “For the video, we wanted imagery that spoke to the themes which permeate Little Rope: uncertainty, restlessness, urgency, all of the in-between and discomfiting states with which we’re forced to reckon,” the band added. “We love the tension created by an act that defies both custom and comfort.”
Watch the music video for “Untidy Creature” below.
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Little Rope is out on January 19th. So far, Sleater-Kinney have also shared the singles “Hell” and “Say It Like You Mean It.” The band is also going on tour in support of the album.