‘The Center Won’t Hold’ brings Sleater-Kinney back to Spokane

Olympia-born band Sleater-Kinney has a thing for Spokane. The band is opening its “The Center Won’t Hold” tour in the Lilac City on Wednesday at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox four years after opening its previous tour with a sold-out show at the Knitting Factory.

Sure, logistics-wise, it makes sense for the duo to kick off tours in Spokane, but, in a recent interview, singer/guitarist Corin Tucker said the decision to start the “Center Won’t Hold” tour here also stemmed from the experience they had when they played in 2015.

“I think Spokane might be our good luck charm,” she said. “We had such a good time last time. We were so nervous. It was our first show in almost a decade. We had come back after the hiatus to play the (first) show in at least eight years. We had a great experience.”

Last time Sleater-Kinney was on the road, the band was coming off a lengthy break and bringing new album “No Cities to Love” with them.

The time between shows isn’t as long this time around, but Tucker and singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein, who formed Sleater-Kinney together in 1994, had to overcome another obstacle: the sudden departure of longtime drummer Janet Weiss.

Weiss announced that she was leaving the band in July, a month and a half before the release of “The Center Won’t Hold.”

“It was definitely a difficult moment,” Tucker said. “ ‘How do we handle this? What should we do?’ There’s a lot of sadness in losing a longtime collaborator like that. I think though, that, Carrie and I felt like we were still really committed to the band and committed to this album.

“We were in the middle of the release, and so we felt like, ‘Well, this is a really hard challenge,’ but we felt like we were going to figure it out together.”

She and Brownstein also got lucky, Tucker said, after finding drummer Angie Boylan, who is joining the band on tour after a recommendation from Tucker’s husband, filmmaker Lance Bangs. Boylan, as it turns out, was playing in a Sleater-Kinney cover band and already knew half of the band’s songs.

“It’s bizarre. It’s awesome,” Tucker said about musicians choosing to dedicate their careers to Sleater-Kinney’s. “What an honor that somebody would care about our music that much that they want to re-create it.

“That’s every writer’s dream is that your music has that kind of impact on listeners so that they would actually care enough about the songs to re-create them live. That’s a really wonderful thing to hear about your music.”

Boylan’s Sleater-Kinney knowledge now includes tunes from “The Center Won’t Hold.” When writing the album, Tucker, Brownstein and Weiss worked independently of one another, a new technique for the band. Tucker said the distance inspired her to approach her songs with a “proof of concept.”

“There were songs that were like, ‘This is what I’m thinking. This is the world that I would want to get into with this song in terms of melody and the voicing of the character.’ … It was interesting for me as a writer to try approaching it that way.”

In January, Sleater-Kinney announced that they were working on the then-untitled album with Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent. The band initially planned to work with numerous producers but found that Clark was the perfect fit.

“She came out of the gate with so many ideas and enthusiasm, but also her skillset was amazing,” Tucker said. “She had ideas for every part of the song.”

Take “Ruins,” for example. Tucker said she, Brownstein and Weiss were using “basic synth sounds” before Clark suggested making the synth sound “disgusting.” Ten synthesizers later, the band settled on one that made the song sound corrosive and dirty.

“That’s an important thing about working with a producer is having an outside ear that brings a whole other character to the album,” Tucker said. “It provides a leadership role that I think is really important, and Annie is a very natural born leader. That was something we enjoyed about working with her.”

As a whole, “The Center Won’t Hold” is loud, in your face and no holds barred – just as Sleater-Kinney has always been.

“We’ve always been a band that craved your attention and wants to take over your space and wants to be heard. I think this album is no exception,” Tucker said. “We feel like in this cultural moment, especially for women, it’s not a time to be quiet or complacent or step back.

“It’s time to be really loud and make ourselves heard and try to change as much as we can about what’s happening now in our country.”