With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
This band has a weight to it. Our songs feel important to play... That was missing in my life without Sleater-Kinney.
I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn't that spectacular.
With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.
My whole life has been one big improvisation.
I knew that collaborating on songwriting would be difficult for a lot of people, because I was known very much, for my independence and the fact that I wrote these quirky songs that were not typical structure, not typical sound - you know, really original stuff.
As a songwriter, that's really what you hope for - to make that connection with your audience.
After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise.
My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.
I did quite a lot of the arranging, fitting different sections together, tempo changes, all sorts of things like that. I actually acted as a bridge between Robert and Ian. Not so much composing, rather presenting musical ideas at each rehearsal.
I was totally involved in Bobby's World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs.