Bikini Kill. Revolution Girl Style Now. The Demos. Plus a Peel Session.

Kathleen Hannah could scream like nobody’s business. I’m talkin’ a hyper-tantrum wail that could pierce walls, lies, ignorance, ideologies, and indifference. She could sing it sweet, too, when she wanted, and the band could more than equal her furious, explosive energy or turn it down to 11 for some laid-back indie sing-alongs. This is movement punk—where the Riot Grrrls traded in anarchy for feminism—angry, articulate, fearless, and playful. Rebel Girl could put up a fight with any other punk song ever recorded. They were out to save lives; to reclaim the “radical possibilities of pleasure” when surrounded by rape culture; to define cool on their own terms in their own voices; to make their own noise, write their own stories; to be the subjects, not the objects of history. They channeled the transgressive, cathartic energy of punk into REVOLUTION GIRL STYLE NOW! If you’re a teen girl, don’t go another day without adding them to your collection. If you’re anybody else, you need to hear them, too.

Punk rock feminism rules, Okay?

Revolution

Emily's Sassy Lime. Desperate, Scared, but Social.

Another craptacular week where I'm not going to have any free time. Stealing this description from wikipedia. I'll just say they sound like Sleater-Kinney as teenagers:

Emilys Sassy Lime (a palindrome) was an all-Asian American teenage riot grrrl trio from SoCal, formed in 1993 by Wendy and Amy Yao, and Emily Ryan. According to Experience Music Project, they formed after sneaking out of their homes one night to see a Bikini Kill and Bratmobile show, striking up a correspondence with Molly Neuman, the drummer of the latter band. They didn't live very close to each other and didn't have cars, so they often had to write their songs over the phone, sometimes leaving seminal ideas for tunes, jingles, and melodies on each others' answering machines. When they finally did have a chance to record, they did so on a singalodeon, a cheap off-the-shelf lo-fi tape recorder. They barely ever practiced (often forbidden from doing so by their parents who considered their studies a bigger priority), making their sound a random, spontaneous indie garage punk-noise collage of "Whatever, just play." They didn't have their own instruments for years, so with every show they played, they had to borrow someone else's in the DIY punk spirit of sharing, often swapping with each other carelessly and making every show sound totally different.

In 1995, they all appeared as dancers in the Kathi Wilcox-directed "Mad Doctor" video for The PeeChees, and they broke up the following year when they finally graduated from high school and attended separate colleges. In 2000, they all participated in the very first Ladyfest in Olympia, the Yao sisters collaborating with Sharon Cheslow in the experimental sound installation performance art project of Coterie Exchange, and in 2003, Emily Ryan starred in one of Jon Moritsugu's critically acclaimed no budget guerrilla underground punk films called Scumrock. Amy Yao's been involved over the years with several different bands, frequently collaborating with Tobi Vail, and completed her MFA in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Wendy Yao currently owns and runs a shop and DIY indie-punk artist space in LA's downtown Chinatown neighborhood called Ooga Booga.

Social

The Casual Dots. The Casual Dots.

This quite often ends up being the album I put on when I can't decide what I want to listen to. It's cool-people-hanging-out music.

Christine Billotte (Autoclave, Slant 6, Quix*o*tic), Kathi Wilcox (Bikini Kill, The Frumpies), and Steve Dore (Deep Lust) create blithe, laid-back pop that’s lean and seductive. Produced by Fugazi's Guy Picciotto, the group weaves an indie-garage-lullaby out of a casually complex dual-guitar interplay, and a propulsive backbeat that lets Christina’s gorgeous, smoky voice lead the way.

They’re by no means folk, but the songs have a Woody-Guthrie-punk quality to them in their own indie-populist way. I would like to have attended the grade school that sang Mama’s Gonna Bake Us a Cake alongside This Land Is Your Land. Despite (or perhaps because of) years in the trenches, they managed to appear with a unique, fully realized sound that none of their previous bands would prepare you for. While genre-hopping from leftist punk, to classic blues (the marvelous Bumblebee), to surf rock instrumentals, they manage to stiffen everything up, giving it a backbone and a little swagger as it marches along with their own distinctive stride.

Dots

Finally Punk. Casual Goths.

Erin Budd, Stephanie Chan, Veronica Ortuno, and Elizabeth Skadden play perky, spazzcore, freak-punk. Karen O and Beth Ditto are apparently big fans, although Finally Punk aren’t making anything as radio friendly as either the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Gossip. They’re more of a no-wave riot grrl outfit—in it for the gleefully ragged joy of playing your guitar like (or perhaps, with) a cheese-grater. Like the Vivian Girls crossed with Wavves crossed with a defibrillator, Finally Punk favor sharp bursts of dissonant, primitive lower-than-lo-fi noise. They cram twenty-six songs into just less than thirty minutes, and a shriek-tastic stab at Nirvana’s Negative Creep is the poppiest moment on here (it’s also excellent). Casual Goths is actually a collection of the band’s first three limited edition EPs, so you can hear them progress from primitive (but not alienating) roots to a more complex, (though still tangled-in-barbed-wire) anti-pop structure. The album is pressed on a beautiful slab of marbled raspberry vinyl, and comes with a CD of all the tracks, plus video footage of their on-stage mayhem. Buy it while you can.



Download Link removed. Go buy it, folks.

Finally Punk on myspace

Buy it from Germs of Youth records

Vera Fang. Conscumption 7" from Army of Bad Luck.

Singer Zopi Kristjanson makes me think of Belaire’s Cari Palazzolo if she were auditioning for Bikini Kill. Musically, they have a lot in common with groups like The Rondelles, Shitt Hottt, and Tuscadero, if they had worshipped Daydream Nation era Sonic Youth along with early B-52’s danceable art punk. One review described their heavy riffs and rail spike rhythms as “slam-glam”, which sounds about right, especially on the two b-sides, Role Dolls and Neon Neverland. Vera Fang must have thought those were their strongest songs, too, since they include a remix of each—one by Diet Cola, and another by decayed-ambient masters Belong.

Grab the vinyl if you can find one. It was a limited edition and the band’s already broken up.

Conscumption

Vera Fang on myspace

Heavens to Betsy. Calculated.

Corin Tucker has always had one of the best voices in rock. It's like getting hit upside the head by Big Mama Thornton. Plus, she can scream bloody murder or quietly cut you to the emotional quick with equal intensity. Strangely, I find I really miss her interplay with Carrie here in a way I didn't with Excuse 17. Maybe it's because Excuse 17 already had a similar dynamic between Carrie and Becca plus Carrie's ferocious guitar that I ended up liking them a little bit more. If I weren't counting backward from Sleater-Kinney I'm not sure how I would feel.

It's raw, but in a different way than Excuse 17 or even early S-K. They're still casting around for the right feel, and a few of the songs don't really differentiate themselves. But that's a minor quibble true of most young bands. They're definitely on to something, and when they hit it (Axemen, Complicated) it's easy to see what sort of greatness lay ahead. I think they put Corin's voice too low in the mix, and too often I find myself thinking that she really needs Carrie's slashing sound to underpin her anger, but that's just my problem. The whole thing's a bit like a feminist zine in album form (the word "privilege" makes a number of appearances): messy, heartfelt, exciting, still figuring things out; the sort of thing that would get passed around hand to hand like a secret gift, a key, the thing that says you are not alone.

Calculated

Heavens to Betsy on myspace

Excuse 17. Such Friends Are Dangerous.

It's a disservice to remember this band solely as the practice run at Sleater-Kinney, but then again, S-K were so monumental, so earth-shaking that it can hardly end up any other way. Listening to this again for the first time in ten or so years, I'm amazed at how well-formed, confident, and bone-cuttingly visceral they were. Of the two pre-Sleater-Kinney bands, (we'll get to Corin's Heavens to Betsy tomorrow), Excuse 17 sound the most like what's to come, with their dual, tangled, razor-wire guitar attack, back and forth vocals, gut-wrenching screams, and sense of moral urgency.

Like much of the work Carrie's associated with, it's an album of catharsis. Whether on the bouncy standout track Watchmaker (a dig at music journalists and scenesters), the painful This is Not Your Wedding Song, or the biting The Drop Dead Look, their combination of pure punk fury and tight musicianship is some pretty righteous shit, no matter what came next.

Such Friends

Excuse 17 on myspace