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LeTigre
Self-Titled
(Mr. Lady Records)
As a member of Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna helped to influence a whole batch of riot grrls. in her new group LeTigre, she still gets political in a lot of the tracks, but given the sound of the group she's possibly decided that the best way to get a message across is with a sugar coated pill. While other women like Hanin Elias (of Atari Teenage Riot, who is actually name-dropped within one song on this disc) are still coupling their lyrical assaults with sonic ones, LeTigre plays sort of a lo-fi mix of disco-punk that's pretty darn catchy.
There are still some blaring guitars and screaming, but instead of pounding rhythms, most tracks have drum machine backing along with some scratching and even some random horns. To help round out the power girl trio of LeTigre, Hanna rounded up independent filmmaker Sadie Benning and fanzine producer Johanna Fateman. It's sort of an album full of juxtapositions in a way. The cover features a lemon yellow bed perfectly made and a cartoon on the back, but the pictures of the band members on the front has them all looking like they're ready to riot. Not only that, but songs on the album go back and forth from political to goofy (even within the course of one track).
The album starts out blistering right from the start with "Deceptacon." With a fuzzy guitar line and drum machine beat, the song attacks "lyrics as dumb as a linoleum floor" while having a chorus of "Who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp?" Is it a take on the expected lyrical content of female music while attacking it at the same time? Probably. The next song "Hot Topic" is one of those name-dropping tracks that not only acts as a shoutout to women doing their own thing, but it's also downright catchy as well.
After the somewhat less interesting "What's Yr Take On Cassavettes?," they launch back into more scathing mode with "The The Empty." It's an easier target in that of the mainstream media, but the trio again combines some growling guitars and a drum machine beat to screamed vocals in taking down their target. The group even pulls of a slower, sexy track with "Eau D' Bedroom Dancing" and a silly and fun track written in dedication to childhood neighbors and their music ("Les and Ray").
In-between, though, they launch a few more attacks on everyone from Rudolph Guiliani ("My My Metrocard") to cloned party boys (or perhaps something else in "Dude Yr So Crazy!"). At any rate, the group has pulled off quite an interesting and infectious debut album. It's keeps the attacks to a fairly low level and the energy at a high one, making it an album that you can rock out to while getting you to think about things just a slight bit at the same time.
Rating: 7.5
