On Oct. 29, I interviewed Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre in a big, new world of possibilities, a world that was anxious but hopeful for the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis, for a woman's right to choose, for everyone's right to affordable health care, and, hell, even for gay marriage. (And by that I mean not that we could actually -- gasp! -- get married, because that's wrong and icky, right? But just maybe we wouldn't be constitutionally banned from ever living out the American dream of 2.5 kids and hospital visitation rights.) Fateman and I talked cautiously yet optimistically about building coalitions, making your voice heard, and (what else?) feminist acrobats.
Le Tigre Army: JD Samson, Kathleen
Hanna, Johanna Fateman.
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Five days later, that nice, big world with high ceilings and hardwood floors collapsed into a dingy, confining, nightmarish, soul-sucking, Armageddon-meets-Office Space-like cubicle of death, its flimsy walls papered with scenic posters advocating motivational messages about "earning political capital," a stack of provisional ballots waiting forlornly in the corner to be used as scratch paper. What's the point in talking about whether or not Le Tigre sold out by signing to Universal? Who cares if "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo," off the band's major-label debut, serves Brooklyn's Fannypack a powerful reminder of just who the den mothers of electro-sass really are? I can barely get out of bed long enough to write this -- crap, I can barely stay sober long enough to write this! I mean, I'm supposed to talk about ELECTROCLASH at a time like this?!
[Yes. You are. -- Ed.]
OK, since I must and since I (along with most of the rest of world) am still involuntarily obsessed with this fiasco of an election, maybe we can look for a lesson, a sort of allegory in the polemics surrounding This Island, Le Tigre's third album, that will help us make sense of the ridiculously stupid world we're living in right now.
If any band out there can provide a link between music and politics, it's Le Tigre, the "feminist electro-punk" brainchild of the original riot grrrl, Kathleen Hanna. Earlier this year, though, the unthinkable happened: The original riot grrrl and her ragtag gang of indie electro-feminists signed to a major label. And that's where our E-Day parallel comes in: Unlike the Dems, Le Tigre has managed to go mainstream and keep intact -- even amp up -- its politically charged message; it's getting the word out to a wider audience and not compromising itself in the process, something the Blues haven't quite figured out how to do. Are you listening, Hillary and Barack?
Hanna, quasi-frontwoman (band members share duties) of Le Tigre, is the former frontwoman of the seminal grrrl punk band Bikini Kill, infamous for its unabashedly feminist, political tunes like "Suck My Left One" and "Rebel Girl," songs that weren't afraid to say "fuck you" and then some. When Bikini Kill broke up in the late '90s, Hanna started a solo career that gradually transitioned into Le Tigre. The group's current lineup includes Hanna, Fateman (keyboards, guitar, vocals), and JD Samson (keyboards, onstage sampler, vocals).
Geeking out to punk, lo-fi, hip hop, and new wave with drum machines and samplers, the band released two albums on indie queer/feminist label Mr. Lady. Hanna's provocative wail/whine and some of that dirty punk/political aesthetic was carried over from Bikini Kill and submerged in pop, creating a sound not unlike a riot grrrl on a sugar bender, a sound that garnered an increasingly large fan base of grrrl-power devotees. But what's that small army supposed to do now that the DIY Virgin Mary has revealed that she'll be sleeping with the enemy? What else? Super-glue together a parallel between that de-martyring and the fallacies of this wretched election and come up with a big allegorical mess that might let us all sleep at night again.
Let's start with the whole idea of selling out. Right now, many of us feel like we sold ourselves out by aligning with a moderate, middle-ground candidate whose insistence that a Democrat is little more than a nicer Republican left him without much ground to stand on when it came to distinguishing himself from He Who Must Not Be Named. Likewise, many in the indie world feel that Le Tigre sold out by signing with Universal. Selling out gave both the Dems and Le Tigre more resources and a wider audience. The lefties screwed it up. Le Tigre did not.
"You know, we've always sort of felt like we're making music for like-minded people. ... We wanted to see if we could make an impact on more than just underground culture," says Fateman.
Le Tigre's potential for building community through pop is readily apparent on This Island. "TKO," for example, the group's first radio single, isn't an explicitly political song, but the sheer force of three girly voices bellowing, "Don't you know/ It's our dance floor/ TKO!," feels like an infectious, insistently danceable call to battle. The more directly radical "New Kicks" samples speeches from an anti-war rally and shout-outs from activists over grinding guitars and hip-shaking electro beats. The potential for bleeding-heart overkill is overridden by the powerful thrill of unified dissent. How many major-label bands are willing or able to stamp around that kind of rabble-rousing terrain with such a sense of enjoyment? And the clincher is that the musicians in Le Tigre have managed to do so without watering down the politics they brought with them from the underground. "Viz," for example, a hipster-butch version of "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it," is much more overtly revolutionary than anything on 1999's Le Tigre.
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