No Rock And Roll Fun

ALL HANDS OFF THE BAD ONES: With a couple of months still to go before the new Sleater-Kinney album The Woods emerges into the marketplace, Corin, Carrie and Janet have gone online to try and stop fans from letting the album:

Hello everyone.
As many of you know, our new record, The Woods, comes out on May 24th. While there is really nothing we can do to stop people from leaking/downloading promo copies of 'The Woods' on the Internet, we want to say that we don't support this action and we want to address it directly, and hopefully, preemptively.

It seems important for you to know how we feel about it.

The people we are most excited to have hear this record are our friends and you, our fans, the people who have supported us and who are eager to hear our new ideas. We feel as impatient for this new music to get out into the world as we're sure some of you do.

Our latest record is something that we have worked on for a long time. The writing took nearly two years in an effort to challenge and push ourselves. And the recording/mixing itself took six weeks. So much of this new record is a response to the deadening and watering down of music. We wanted to make something that felt wild and alive and that made us excited to wake up in the mornings. There is art work and lyrics and images that we want to share. Ideally, we want to present this record in the way we envision it; as a complete entity, flowing and tangible and within the context that we have created for it. Part of that context is the community that we come from, and this community includes you. And we have some of the best fans: you are smart and critical and outspoken, and we're proud to feel a connection with you.

We know that most people who download indie songs/albums for free find other ways of supporting the bands they love. And we acknowledge that it is a new era and that many people discover music through file sharing. We feel lucky to be a band that has grown organically over the years and we realize that technology has changed the entire process of growth and awareness of music. (We love, for instance, that bootlegs of our live shows are traded on the Internet.) It's scary to imagine that this leak might actually affect our livelihoods, but ultimately this isn't about the fear of people not supporting us financially as indie artists. We don't think of 'The Woods' as some product getting out there early, we think of it as our art and lives and dreams. For us it's about respect and about people supporting us by being aware of our artistic intent. We ask that you please respect our wishes to present this record the way we intended. We're certain that you would want the same for your own endeavors, artistic or otherwise.

So much of what this record is about sacrificing everything to feeling, it's about experience and living and being in the present tense. There will be so many things to experience between now and May 24th; so many other records to sit with and live through, as well as films, books, friends, conversations, etc.

The most honest thing we can say is that it breaks our hearts to think of this being out there early. It actually just feels awful. The release date is 3 months away. We have worked for so long on this record. It's not real for us until May 24th; that is the moment when we get to share this piece of our lives that we are so proud of, to share it with you the way we intended; please wait until then to share it with us.

If you have put this record up on the Internet, please take it down now.

Thank you,
Corin, Carrie, and Janet

Hmm... so it's not about the money, it's the experience? It's a fair enough plea - although the "please take it down" has the slight air of my old boss who asked someone to "ring up the internet and ask them how we get on it"; once it's out there, it's out there, surely?