Skip to content
Premieres

Corin Tucker Honors Poly Styrene in Rambunctious ‘Neskowin’ Clip

Corin Tucker Band / Photo Alicia J. Rose, www.aliciajrosephotography.com

If girls just wanna have fun, that still doesn’t mean all girls just wanna have fun the same way. Corin Tucker Band’s new video for “Neskowin,” from the former Sleater-Kinney belter-led outfit’s second album Kill My Blues (out today on Kill Rock Stars), has hit NPR, and it’s an alt-girl’s coming-of-age tale fit for an edgier John Hughes film. Directed by Alicia J. Rose, a fellow musician who also recently shot Bob Mould’s “The Descent” visuals, the clip shows Tucker as wise mother, as friendly hippie, and, brilliantly, as late X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene, whose passing punk-leaning listeners of all stripes mourned last year.

This spiky post-punk song’s powerfully delivered lyrics reportedly draw inspiration from a childhood trip to the town of Neskowin, Oregon, where Tucker went with her best friend at age 13. And that’s where the video begins: “Two teenage girls, headed for the world / Heads barely out of fairy tales / Bodies grown up, ready to go,” Tucker yowls with the force of a Beth Ditto machine. From there, the girls rock out, give each other makeovers, then hitchhike with the aforementioned hippies, though after their innocent flirtations at an arcade turn into a brawl, they wind up at a Tucker-fronted X-Ray Spex show. Which looks like a fun place to be, and more than enough to kill anyone’s blues.