By the third page of her memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein seems to say it all. "My story starts as a fan," she writes. "And to be a fan is to know that loving trumps being beloved." Anyone who has devoted a life to worshipping at the altar of sound could be moved to tears by the thought. Hunger is full of empathic observations like this, where Brownstein uses her tales—from birth through Sleater-Kinney's hiatus in 2006—to shine a light on some undersung truth about what it means to live and die for music. Her writing is sharp, erudite, and witty, and it makes Hunger my favorite music memoir since Just Kids.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl arrives at a moment of unprecented reverence for the feminist rock memoir. It follows celebrated recent books by Kim Gordon, Viv Albertine of the Slits, and Patti herself (whose successes, once again, may be responsible for sparking this new wave). Memoirs always beg particular questions: Why do we read these? What does biographical information really teach? Are the riffs and lyrics and beats implanted in our minds not enough? If, like Hunger, these books are done right, they respond in sublime ways. They transform us as much as the songs do. In advance of Hunger—which is out today—I met Brownstein at her Manhattan hotel room to discuss hunger, Olympia punk, the virtues of ugliness, coping with depression, Shamir, and more.-=-=-=-

Pitchfork: What did you learn about yourself from writing this book?

Carrie Brownstein: Gosh... It's very common to think that we're always evolving, that we've changed so much from our younger selves, that within decades we've transformed into these different people. We like to think that. I find so many commonalities, really. I feel in some ways that I am still so much my younger self. That there are certain innate qualities that I've always possessed. And the more I was writing about my younger self... I really wonder how much I've changed. There are ways that I'm different: I feel like I'm wiser and kinder. But I think a lot of the impulses are still the same. I learned that.

Pitchfork: What are some of those innate qualities? I'm curious as to how you feel your involvement in the Olympia punk scene permanently changed you.

CB: I think I still walk around with an irascibility. And I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with. A little bit of that came out of Olympia—kind of an irreverence that I really have never been able to put behind me. Problems with authority. A real mistrust of the mainstream. A mistrust of conformity, normality.

I've always been interested in queerness and underground and fringe and periphery, and who and what flourishes in those spaces. Those spaces that are darker and dingier and more dangerous, more lonely. What comes out of there, to me, is the life force. I'm excited when the center reaches over to those places and pulls inspiration from them, and translates it for a lot of people. I'm not saying that shouldn't happen; that's a really exciting moment. But I'm interested in the crevices, and the grotesque, and the unsavory. That started out when I was young and was really nurtured and fostered in Olympia. I've never quite been able to shake that.