Carrie Brownstein on "Inchoate" Youth and the Search for "Trenchant" Meaning

I see myself in that song. And I guess it speaks to the sort of synchronicity and symbiotic nature that Corin and I have as co-writers. But yeah, I certainly relate to those lyrics.

I see myself in that song. And I guess it speaks to the sort of synchronicity and symbiotic nature that Corin and I have as co-writers. But yeah, I certainly relate to those lyrics.

GROSS: "Dig Me Out" is the first thing that Carrie Brownstein had tattooed. And if you see her book "Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl," you will see a picture of that tattoo (laughter). So...

BROWNSTEIN: So salacious - guess where that tattoo is? You won't know until you read the book.

When I was 16, 17 years old, I became aware of music coming out of Olympia, Wash., ...and for the first time, I heard my story being explained to me, being sung to me. I just felt so inchoate as a person. And I felt like things were being filled in for me, that all of the elements in my life that couldn't be explained that I didn't have the words for were suddenly given a shape, that I had a soundtrack, that I was being seen.

Here's "You Annoy Me." I will not sing it, but I think the gist of the lyrics are, the way you look really annoys me. The way you talk really bores me. You think that you are always right….That seems like a very typical teenage angst recitation. The whole world was kind of driving me crazy at that point, as it's apt to do when you're young.

GROSS: You say that at night, you'd often wake up terrified of death or disease and that your brain rarely quieted. What were you afraid of?
BROWNSTEIN: Well, I was growing up in a fairly unstable household with a mother whose encroaching illness was very much permeating the landscape of my psyche and also of the family. And so these fears were somewhat amorphous, but I just had a kind of general anxiety and sense of unease.

I see family as a constellation of friends or lovers or people who embody compassion, kindness, openness and allowance for faults and contradictions. And ...provide a sense of belonging. ...I think the reality for most people is that family looks and feels differently from the one we grew up with. For some people, that's a huge relief. And I think acknowledging that that's a relief helps kind of normalize difference, so yeah.

So instead, I tell this story which was horrific for me because it really so perfectly expresses the way that I had tried to assemble a family - that it could be this collection of love and comfort.

And in the trajectory of the narrative and in creating this story about seeking family and belonging and looking for a sense of visibility, I didn't want to just say, yeah, I was pretty sad once this version of family ended.

I wanted the guitar to feel weaponized. I wanted it to be analogous to a voice that I didn't yet have and may never have, which is to harness volume and a sense of the caustic and power and to interweave that occasionally with melody so that it's something people can latch onto or be carried away by, that it could tell stories and sing on my behalf. And I wanted it to be trenchant, also a little scary. So yeah, that - I guess that's the sound I was going for.