QTheMusic.com

Carrie Brownstein has probably done enough in her career to be assured of "cult status" for the rest of her days. A key member of Sleater-Kinney and now the leader of Wild Flag, mainstream success might not be on her agenda but she is clearly beloved by those in the know. However, it seems the amount of people in the know is suddenly getting much larger thanks to her sitcom Portlandia.

Created with Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, the show has become one of the most talked about comedies in the US with guest appearances from the likes of Joanna Newsom, Johnny Marr, Eddie Vedder and The Shins' James Mercer taking the online buzz to a global level.

Set in Brownstein's native Portland, the show is an irreverent, loosely-scripted caricature of the city's more bohemian inhabitants: from a pair of feminist bookstore owners and a reggae bass-playing mayor played by Twin Peaks' Kyle MacLachlan, all the way to a couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they run out of episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Now in its second season, its reputation is now such that Hollywood heavyweights like Jeff Goldblum, Tim Robbins and Kristen Wiig have been jostling with the musicians for guest spots.

"I met Fred when I was still in Sleater-Kinney," Brownstein tells Q of her collaborator, noting that he too can point to a musical background having once drummed on a Les Savy Fav album. "He was a fan of the band and we had a lot of friends in common, so he invited us down to the filming of an episode of SNL. There was this instant connection. We shared a lot of the same interests and sensibilities and we wanted to work on something creative together."

From their initial meeting the pair began working on comedy shorts together - or "little vignettes" as Brownstein calls them - under the name of Thunderant. "They were all these different permutations of our friendship and explorations of our different relationships with people - just for ourselves and our friends," she recalls. These didn't stay 'in-jokes' for long though, quickly attracting the attention of US channel IFC who commissioned a TV series based on their work in July 2009.

Comedy might not be a typical career move for a musician of Brownstein's ilk, but it's something she says she's been curious about for a long time. "I've always loved comedy. I'm interested in the way something serious can start to feel humorous, how something that feels earnest can become farcical, the way gravity and levity intersect," she explains, before citing Father Ted as a major inspiration. "I love that show. The contrast between the rugged island, this kinda beautiful, pristine place, and its buffoon-like residents. In what should have been this peaceful remote enclave in Ireland, you start digging in a little further and it's so hilarious and absurd. It was such an amazing study in friendship. I was fascinated by it, the way it revolves around a place."

It's a tactic that the Wild Flag singer carried over into her own work on Portlandia. "They're similar in that way, yeah. The city functions almost like a character in our show. It's about how people relate to their environment and how a place informs their decisions," she explains. "But Portland could be substituted for almost any other city. That's why people all over America can relate to it."

The show has been frequently described as a "hipster satire" by American's media, a term that frustrates and bemuses Brownstein in equal measure. "I think what's interesting about the term hipster is that no one actually knows what it means. It's a really benign and banal term that's just applied to variety of people with very little commonality between them," she sighs. "Anything we don't understand or perceive as being cooler than us, they're a hipster. To me, the show has nothing to do with hipsters. I don't even understand what that word means."

With the programme's growing following, both on US screens and beyond via online rips, Brownstein and Armisen were able to take Portlandia on the road in January, touring a series of sketches and musical numbers at venues across the States welcoming performances from the likes of St Vincent and Eleanor Friedberger along the way. A tie-in book is also due for release in November.

"There's a few things in the pipeline. Right now we're just concentrating on writing the third season," says Brownstein, who insists she's surprised by the international interest in her hometown satire. There are currently no plans to air the series in the UK but the singer remains confident it'll make it over eventually. "The show is gradually getting picked up in Europe, so who knows?" she says, laughing off the suggestion we might need a British spin-off. "Portlandia: Port Of Call Dalston? Well, erm, we'll see!"
Al Horner @Al_Horner

For more head to IFC.com/shows/portlandia and Myspace.com/wildflag.

12:32 PM | 24/02/2012