Ideas. Stories. Community.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Donate during KSJD's Spring Fund Drive and you could win a Super73 E-Bike! Click here to donate NOW.

'We Can't Just Settle': Broad City Meets Sleater-Kinney

In a raucous and revealing panel discussion at New York City's Ace Hotel, the stars and creators of Comedy Central's Broad City interviewed all three members of the newly reunited rock band Sleater-Kinney Friday night. As part of a lengthy Q&A before an intimate crowd of about 150, Broad City's Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer peppered Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss with far-reaching questions shortly before the Tuesday release date for Sleater-Kinney's new album, No Cities To Love.

Though the two groups have operated under drastically different timelines — Broad City premiered just last year, while Sleater-Kinney was founded more than two decades ago — the members of both had much to say about creative restlessness ("We can't just settle," Weiss says), feminism, gender-based pigeonholing, audience and media expectations and commercialism. Glazer even read off a few questions submitted by Amy Poehler, an avowed Sleater-Kinney fan who helped will Broad City into televised existence.

Naturally, the Ace Hotel's Liberty Hall wasn't nearly large enough to fit everyone who'd want to attend, especially given the unique moment in each of the careers represented on stage. One of the most celebrated and important bands of the last 25 years, Sleater-Kinney only recently ended an eight-year hiatus, while Broad City just last week kicked off its second season — and, it turns out, has just been renewed for a third. Following the everyday coexistence of two twentysomething best friends in New York City, the show (which spun off from a successful web-only series) finds humor in the awkwardness of the everyday.

The mutual respect onstage was unmistakable: When Glazer and Jacobson insisted that Broad City wouldn't exist without Sleater-Kinney, Tucker replied, "When we watch your show, I want to write a song."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)