Corin Tucker laughs when I ask if Emerald Valley, the second album from Filthy Friends, is an angrier record. “It’s definitely angry,” she says. “And it’s really sad too.” Which makes sense—anger and sadness are sort of Tucker’s twin engines. Whether she’s fronting Sleater-Kinney, leading the Corin Tucker Band, or teaming up with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey in Filthy Friends, she’s always written like someone trying to will the world into something fairer, or at least less stupid.
On Emerald Valley, she trains that fury on the Pacific Northwest—the place she’s called home since she was 12—and the damage she’s watched it endure. “I really remember what it used to be like,” she says. “The climate has changed. Not ‘will change.’ Has changed. We’re living on this hotter, weirder planet, and we have to use that as fuel to make serious changes.”
The album began with Buck showing her a long, weird riff—“kind of Zeppelin-y,” she laughs—which became the title track. From there came songs about migrant workers, deforestation, and the quiet heartbreak of watching paradise get paved over. “It’s specific to where we live, but it’s everywhere now,” Tucker says. “The people who pick the food, who build the houses—they’re part of our community. I wanted to write about that.”
She calls her approach “painting short stories,” layering imagery and emotion over what she calls the “soundtrack of frustration.” “People connect to stories,” she says. “You can’t just shout facts. I wanted to show what it’s like to grow up here, how beautiful it was, and how much we’ve lost.”
That balance of beauty and rage runs through every Filthy Friends song. “Everyone in the band is all in for a mood,” she says. “No one’s trying to break out or be flashy. If the song’s dark, everyone’s in the dark with you.”
Tucker’s known for tackling big themes, but this one cuts close. “I think of this record as grieving,” she admits. “It’s grief for a place. And that’s hard to write about without sounding hopeless.”
Of course, hopelessness isn’t really her thing. She’s too restless. “These are turbulent times,” she says. “I’ve got kids, I’ve got other work, but collaborating with these musicians—Scott, Linda Pitmon, Kurt Bloch, Peter—it’s a gift. They make me want to stretch as a songwriter. I don’t take that for granted.”
That stretch extends to her other day job: Sleater-Kinney. When we spoke, she’d just finished recording with Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) producing. “It’s such a completely different record,” she says. “Super psychic. Personal. Upset.” She laughs at her own phrasing. “Annie really pushed us to try new things. People are going to be surprised.”
It’s easy to forget Tucker’s been at this for nearly three decades because her output feels perpetually urgent—still barbed, still necessary. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m 46 and suddenly doing two records at once,” she says. “There’s a lot to say right now.”
The thread between her current work and Sleater-Kinney’s 1999 Hot Rock isn’t lost on her either. “That record was about losing community to technology,” she says. “Now it’s worse. We were talking about it twenty years ago, but here we are—more isolated than ever.”
And yet, she still believes in connection. In collaboration. In noise. “You don’t grow as an artist unless you ask more of yourself,” she says. “Otherwise, you stagnate. You stop learning.”
So maybe that’s why Emerald Valley doesn’t sound like a side project—it sounds like unfinished business. “I just love writing songs,” Tucker says, smiling. “I guess that’s my rebellion. Keep making noise. Keep saying what needs to be said.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out some video below.
