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| It was a fleeting moment in time... |
Wild Fang was a short-lived, cross-country super-group, a mash-up of members from Helium, The Minders, and Sleater-Kinney – but mostly Sleater-Kinney. The latter had disbanded about five years prior (2006 to 2011) and, in her very thorough telling (this is the source for a lot of what's below), Carrie Brownstein had even stepped away from music. At some point during 2010, she, Janet Weiss (both of Sleater-Kinney) and Rebecca Cole (The Minders) got invited to contribute to a project called “[!Women Art Revolution]” and a quirk in the creative process made Brownstein think of Mary Timony (Helium). Over the next several months, that accidental collaboration lead to a couple handfuls of songs and, eventually, touring. Extensive touring, as it happens, and with a mission:
“I think one of the reasons we toured so much before the album came out was because we almost wanted to give people a chance to reject it.”
Based on what little I read Wild Fang, different members brought different motivations to the project. As alluded to in the quote above, Brownstein got to a spot where she missed music (Weiss, probably less so; she stayed busy), but didn’t want to go through being Sleater-Kinney again. With 13 years between Helium’s last unplugging of the mics and Brownstein’s phone call, and after burning out on solo projects, Timony was already thinking about collaborating when Brownstein reached out. Cole, meanwhile, had looked hard enough for something to do to find graduate school. They got together in the end, put out an album, and held together for three years, or thereabouts.
When they called it quits, Brownstein blamed logistics, but maybe Cole outlined the future we she talked about the excitement about the work that kept Wild Flag going. They only managed the one album. It’s a decent album, certainly not offensive, but I can barely remember the two songs that I posted on the weekly Spotify playlist (and grudgingly, more “plus-ones” than invites; the songs are “Endless Talk” and “Racehorse”). If you find it (username: snackyd), you’ll see plenty of Helium and Sleater-Kinney on there, so this probably has less to do with the artists involved, than how they fit together.
“I think one of the reasons we toured so much before the album came out was because we almost wanted to give people a chance to reject it.”
Based on what little I read Wild Fang, different members brought different motivations to the project. As alluded to in the quote above, Brownstein got to a spot where she missed music (Weiss, probably less so; she stayed busy), but didn’t want to go through being Sleater-Kinney again. With 13 years between Helium’s last unplugging of the mics and Brownstein’s phone call, and after burning out on solo projects, Timony was already thinking about collaborating when Brownstein reached out. Cole, meanwhile, had looked hard enough for something to do to find graduate school. They got together in the end, put out an album, and held together for three years, or thereabouts.
When they called it quits, Brownstein blamed logistics, but maybe Cole outlined the future we she talked about the excitement about the work that kept Wild Flag going. They only managed the one album. It’s a decent album, certainly not offensive, but I can barely remember the two songs that I posted on the weekly Spotify playlist (and grudgingly, more “plus-ones” than invites; the songs are “Endless Talk” and “Racehorse”). If you find it (username: snackyd), you’ll see plenty of Helium and Sleater-Kinney on there, so this probably has less to do with the artists involved, than how they fit together.
