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Another occasional series, this one involving actual writing and inspired by two of my favourite music boys. Scott, whose Black Powder Smoke ruminations on music and film are frequently more entertaining than the subject matter, has been working on a list he’s calling The Forty Artists That Shaped Me. While I don’t have as many as forty (that I love, sure, but that changed my life?), I really liked the idea… and then Steve pointed out that I never followed up on his Ten Albums To Tell Someone Who You Are.

So here’s my compromise: ten artists that shaped me, and quite possibly the albums they did it with.

Have you ever noticed that horrible habit I have of starting what seems to be a perfectly worthy project, only to abandon it as I get distracted or as I move onto something which at the time seems even more worthy? The other night I noticed a handwritten list of “the ten artists who shaped me” at the back of my travel journal, and I couldn’t remember how far I had gotten with it.

It’s been almost a year since my last installment, but with Sleater-Kinney next on the list and Corin Tucker’s solo album due for imminent release (here’s a great catchup with Paste magazine on the subject), it seems like the perfect time to get this project back on track.

Sleater-Kinney? Are they not estate agents? You’ll be disappointed if you show up and they try to sell you a flat.
- EDDIE, 2006

I found out Sleater-Kinney had split up (or “declared an indefinite hiatus”) from behind my old desk at my last job, trying my hardest not to cry. One of my favourite things about working in an office environment is the sense of camaraderie you get: when you’re sitting staring at the same people for eight hours a day every day without the customers or clients who are the main focus in other employment situations to act as a distraction a weird kind of shorthand develops, and you find yourself telling these people things that you maybe hadn’t even had the chance to tell your best friends yet. You become, for want of a better term, something akin to family. We didn’t always have a lot in common, but I enjoyed the good-natured teasing on who I was calling “my favourite band” in breathless, overenthusiastic tones that week (it’s where this blog’s my new favourite band tag originally stemmed from, ever-so-slightly tongue in cheek). So when I hiccuped back a tear and commented that “my favourite band” were no more, I didn’t really expect them to understand.

While I guess the Libertines were my Take That, for want of a better cultural touchstone (mummy, the pwetty boys aren’t going to sing any more songs about girls drugs/each other that I can close my eyes and pretend are about me!), Sleater-Kinney’s breakup was the one that really made an impression. There was no drama, no fanfare: just eleven years and six seven fantastic albums. It was arguably the first time that one of “my” bands had called it quits: Hole were already on their final (or so we all thought at the time) album before I even got there, and REM still show no signs of slowing down although it might have done their later output a bit of good. The Portland-based trio were true trailblazers, respected for their longevity and their talent and not just because god forbid they were girls.

As is so often the case with the most important things, I can’t really remember a time when Sleater-Kinney weren’t a part of my life or even how they got there. There was a mix from Staci at one point; and an mp3 disc from Stevie filled with albums he couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard already – One Beat being among them. But it was when I moved to Edinburgh that I started to pick up the band’s older recordings for £5 a time in places like Avalanche, and there that I began to listen to those albums constantly. There were drunken nights out, Amy and I singing “Little Babies” walking up through the Grassmarket, and there were nights in my room with the albums for company.

I saw them twice: once in London, the first time I traveled to the capital for the sake of a band. Stevie and Jo were there, and Sapph met a boy down the front. I was planning to make it a round trip with a night in Belfast too, but my boss threw a fit when she saw from the annual leave request I would have ended up jeopardising a professional commitment for the sake of words and guitar. And then, the month before the announcement, Dave M and I saw them at the Oran Mor – the only time I’ve ever seen my least favourite Glasgow venue brought to its knees, its shitty acoustics no match for a band in their prime touring the reinvention that was The Woods. That was the night I stalked Corin Tucker in the ladies’, and got her to sign my ticket with the kohl that was the only writing implement I had in my bag – a fact of which I am only slightly ashamed.

Nothing like some protruding shoulder blades to actually make you feel relieved to have put on a bit of weight.

Two months after that show, I was interviewing bands at T in the Park in my “Sleater-Kinney is for Lovers” t-shirt, prompting a conversation with none other than Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. “That’s why you’re my favourite band now,” I told him, ever the picture of unflappable indie cool. But the words rang a little hollow, because until a certain Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis bar band came along, there wouldn’t be another band who would encapsulate that phrase as perfectly as Sleater-Kinney did.

1,000 Years, the debut album from The Corin Tucker Band, is released on Kill Rock Stars on 5th October. Carrie Brownstein appears in the video for The Thermals’ new single “I Don’t Believe You”, and Janet Weiss is currently performing with Quasi and The Jicks.

BUY: The Woods (and other albums by Sleater-Kinney) at Amazon.co.uk