“People disparage Gibson’s Norlin years, but my '72 SG has a classic tone. It comes down to how you play it.” Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein challenges lazy thinking about Gibson’s most notorious era

Much is made of Gibson’s Norlin era, the period from 1969 to 1986 when the Norlin Corporation took ownership of the brand. Gibson electric guitars from this stretch are roundly characterized as having poor design (shallower necks, bigger headstocks, heavier bodies), poor material selection (chrome hardware instead of nickel, randomly joined multipiece tops) and quality control issues (badly applied binding, excess glue).

And yet there are many guitarists who love their Norlin-era Gibsons.

You can count Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstone among them. Her main guitar is a 1972 Gibson SG.

On Sleater-Kinney's latest record, Little Rope, she and co-guitarist Corin Tucker used two guitars that represent opposing times in Gibson’s history: Brownstein’s SG and Tucker’s P90-equipped '50s reissue Les Paul Gold Top. The guitars make an enticing sonic blend on the album, which was written and recorded in the wake of a car accident that claimed the life of Brownstein's mother and stepfather. Little Rope was reissued in early November in a Deluxe edition that includes the previously released stripped-back Frayed Rope Sessions EP, live versions captured at the Forum in Melbourne and three unreleased new songs recorded during the original album sessions.

Given Brownstein's appreciation for Norlin-era Gibsons, it’s interesting to learn she selected Tucker’s 1950s-style Les Paul.

“Carrie bought me that guitar for my birthday while we were making the album,” Tucker explains. “It’s an homage to [producer] John Goodmanson's Les Paul that I played on [1997’s] Dig Me Out. That was a super-heavy Les Paul, and it really worked for that album with Carrie's SG. That was just such a signature sound for us.

“So this was the guitar I ended up playing for the entire album. The P90s are rich-sounding and distinct. They don't overwhelm anything that's going on, and they stand out for what I'm trying to do. They really sing, but they never shriek or overwhelm anything Carrie's doing.”

Brownstein said she was particularly drawn to the fact that the guitar is new. “I love vintage guitars, but for touring I appreciate newer, more updated equipment. When we detune to C#, we really wrestle with older guitars. I wanted something that sounded classic but was really playable and road-tested for Corin.

"I also thought she should have a guitar that was aesthetically beautiful. And there's nothing more classically beautiful than that version of the Les Paul Gold Top.”

As for Brownstein’s 1972 SG, it remains her go-to, a preference that runs in defiance of what many guitarists consider gospel when it comes to Gibson’s Norlin years.

“It's certainly a controversial era. You could easily discount it,” she says of her '72 SG

To the contrary, she says her example is well-suited to her and Sleater-Kinney’s music.

“I like the tone of that guitar,” she says. “The neck is a little bit thinner, and it makes it very playable. To me, it just comes down to tone. You can get a guitar from that era that feels like it doesn't live up to what Gibson, and specifically an SG, is capable of representing or evoking sonically. But for me, that guitar works perfectly.”

Certainly, tone is central to the argument against the Norlin guitars, with many players saying the instruments sound inferior to those from the preceding period. But Brownstein says those considerations aren’t relevant to her.

“People who tend to disparage the Norlin era are thinking of music and sonic quality in a very purist way,” she says. “Sleater-Kinney is a band that comes from a punk-rock foundation. Much of punk was about deconstructing or dismantling this idea of music purity and being unafraid to explore sounds that were grotesque, ugly and drifted from the norm.

“I wasn't necessarily thinking, ‘What is the best-sounding Gibson SG I can come up with?’ We weren't trying to just sound like the best version of a good Gibson-based guitar band. That wasn't part of the sonic lexicon that we were going for. But it turned out that that guitar has a really wonderful, classic, dynamic tone.

"It comes down to how you play it and what kind of tone you're looking for. We tend to approach the guitar in an unconventional way, you know, the way we play together."

With that said, Brownstein acknowledges that there is an argument to be made for both the purists’ point of view and her own.

“It's fun to nerd-out on minutia in terms of guitars, years, eras, makes and models,” she acknowledges. “But there's also a part of me that does care — that cares more — about what you're able to do with an instrument, as opposed to what the instrument signifies on its own.

“On its own, it's a relic; it's a museum piece, right? There's a sterility to a guitar sitting on a guitar stand or on a wall. But the second you put it into someone's hand, and they play it, and they're infusing it with their feelings and passion, then it's a whole different beast.

“So from a more emotional, expressive perspective, I don't really care about the arguments. From a more intellectual perspective, it's interesting and important to have historical context and to understand the reason this era sounds different from the era that preceded it or followed it.

“So I see both sides, for sure. Ultimately, I think I fall on the side of expressionism, as opposed to anything that's too didactic. But I can always appreciate guitar lovers nerding-out on the specifics. So put me right down the middle, I guess.”

The Deluxe edition of Little Rope offers more opportunities to hear Brownstein’s and Tucker’s sonic collaboration, including its three new tracks: ”Here Today,” "This Time" and "Nothing to Lose.”

“We tried to overwrite for this record and had excess songs that weren't quite complete,” Brownstein explains. “We fought for, wrote to completion and wanted to continue to wrestle with these. We came from a time when an album was still a statement, told a story, and had a sequence that spoke to a narrative. So we wanted to have an album with a tautness and that was terse and forceful.

"I like how the Deluxe album fills in the emotional periphery of this album and creates a broader picture. I'm excited for people to hear the album in its totality, in terms of the original intention, and then to see what we subtracted to make Little Rope as it was originally released.

With Little Rope's deluxe release, Brownstein and Tucker are preparing for 2025, which they refer to as a "hybrid year" that will include touring and "slowly starting to write and regroup for whatever comes next.”