While I've listened to some Sleater-Kinney and enjoyed it, it's not a band I'm terribly familiar with, but generally musician autobiographies are a good read. They can generally be relied on to be filled with a questionable amount of drinking and/or drugs, questionable groupies, and general debauchery. Oftentimes a case of life being crazier than fiction and at the conclusion, wondering how these stars lived through it all to tell their tales.
I consider this the antithesis of the typical rock memoir. Carrie Brownstein's retelling of life on the road is a cerebral one. It's introspective and self-reflective. It's not always pretty, but it certainly is punk. It begins with a tumultous childhood - both of her parents had their own very major personal struggles and therefore weren't really there for Carrie. Her youth was one of an outsider looking in, whether it was in her aesthetic, her personality or her insecurities. As she found her place in music, it was always on the periphery - but this was a conscious choice. It was a middle finger to the mainstream with raw sound and lyrics and noise reflecting her inner turmoil. It was never meant to be pretty. The beauty was found in the ripped edges, the scars of life and the jagged relationships.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl proved to me that a music memoir doesn't need to have all of the excess and indulgence typically associated with life on the road to make a captivating read. Once in a while, a regular person rises to the top and becomes a headliner, not because of a life fueled by gluttony but because they're propelled by simple pure hunger.
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