Photo by Megan Holmes

Before Sleater-Kinney went on indefinite hiatus in 2006, Corin Tucker's feral wail was one of the most righteous, powerful, earth-shattering sounds in all of indiedom. But since then, we've been largely deprived of that voice. Tucker has sung backup on a few Eddie Vedder solo songs, but she's mostly disappeared from the music world, taking time off to be a mom.

When we spoke to her Sleater-Kinney bandmate Carrie Brownstein last month, though, Brownstein mentioned that Tucker was at work on a solo album for Kill Rock Stars. And now, lo and behold, Tucker has confirmed that she's well into the process of recording that album, which she hopes to release in October.

The album doesn't have a title or a release date yet, but Tucker's been at work in a Portland studio, teaming up with Unwound's Sara Lund and Golden Bears' Seth Lorinczi. In a Portland Mercury interview, Tucker about the process of getting back to music and how the album might eventually sound. She mentions that she plays acoustic guitar on the record, and that "It's definitely more of a middle-aged mom record, in a way. It's not a record that a young person would write... There's some sadness, some reinvention, some rebirth. I think the goal for me is to write some good stories."

Musically, she says it may be "more traditional in some of the arrangements" than Sleater-Kinney. A few intriguing reference points are mentioned: the Slits, the Raincoats, the English Beat, and Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra.

She doesn't expect to do any full-scale international touring behind the project, though. Tucker mentions that she'll probably play a few shows on both coasts, as well as, hopefully, the odd festival: "We're doing a creative project, with a really low budget, on a really small scale, and [we'll] do a handful of shows to have people hear about the record."

In an IFC interview last month, Brownstein mentioned that Sleater-Kinney could return in oh, say, five years. In that Portland Mercury interview, Tucker seems to echo that noncommittal but awesome sentiment: "The door is open. We ended things on a hiatus, so that it was always something that could happen in the future. You know, I'd love to live a long productive life and do a lot of different things. This has been the challenge of trying different musical styles, and I'd like to do more of that-- regardless of Sleater-Kinney or other projects."