Bikini Kill
"The Anti-Pleasure Dissertation" EP/"I Love Fucking" b/w "I Hate Danger" (Kill Rock Stars)
I love Bikini Kill's music, I love the idea of pro-Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill existing and recording and subverting all the cock-rock bullshit music in the world (how many fucking LA strip bands do we need, anyway?), I love the reality and execution of that idea. I love watching them fuck up the system. Their songs are angry and each one sounds like Gabriel's horn, bringing down the walls of Jericho, but in BK's case, I think it's probably more along the lines of the band doing their goddamnedest to blast apart the glass ceiling and the sexist walls in the indie/punk communities with six-strings, bass and drums. There's a revolution going on right here in these songs. Whether you choose to listen is your business, but if you don't pay attention it will smack you upside the head, sooner or later. And while I may not be able to say with any certainty what the sound of one hand clapping is, this is the sound that roars.
"Reject All American" CD (Kill Rock Stars)
Just when I come to suspect Bikini Kill can't get any better, that their anger has finally hit a pinnacle and their rage is a barely controlled boil but won't get any hotter, they return with a new album which is angrier than ever before. They're harder, smarter and articulate their fury with all the ferocity and burning intensity of coherent light slicing a microdot-thin line through titanium. Songs like "Bloody Ice Cream" are nothing less than indictments of the patriarchy, handed down by the Revolutionary Tribunal, criticizing the implicit messages surrounding people like Sylvia Plath. To wit, "Who is it that told me all girls who write must suicide?" The response? Complete rejection of the values that got us here. We can't rebuild until we tear the existing structures down and Bikini Kill is doing more than their fair share, deconstructing pop, rock and punk one note at a time until all that's left is broken bits of brick, rebar and glass sparkling in the apocalyptic landscape of independence and freedom. In short, this fucking rules.