“It’s a different time, but it is and it isn’t,” Vail says. Their cool protest songs predicted and shaped our current cultural moment, in which recognizing the politics in art is non-negotiable. “I consider their music to be pretty threatening to the status quo, if we consider the status quo to be patriarchy and the music industry.”īikini Kill’s insurrectionism feels more vital than ever. “Our struggles as feminists in punk have been different, but I see it as a sort of similar thing, where maybe the world wasn’t ready for the Raincoats at the time,” Vail says. The Raincoats have been a source of inspiration for Vail since her teenage years (and friends since Bikini Kill toured the UK in 1993), but at The Kitchen she saw something more: older women continuing to make art with humor, ferocity, and deep friendship. I’ve had many of my own transcendent experiences watching the Raincoats play: They are in their 60s and 70s and still perform regularly, exuding total unselfconscious joy and resilience, forging inspired cross-generational dialogue with their work. Michelle Groskopfīoth Hanna and Vail said that the Raincoats were a big reason for the reunion (“We were all very moved by seeing that show,” Vail adds). Tobi Vail at Bikini Kill’s first Palladium show. When Vail, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and singer-guitarist Kathleen Hanna took the stage together, linear time collapsed. Just a few hours before doors, when the Raincoats’ live drummer, Vice Cooler, alerted me to the fact that “three members of Bikini Kill” were in the building, I spiraled quickly from puzzled to shook to awe to glee.
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At this final event, organized by Raincoat Shirley O’Loughlin and dubbed “The Raincoats and Friends,” I was slated to read in between a series of screenings and performances, including one from Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail.
The occasion was a series of celebrations for the legendary UK punk band the Raincoats, loosely organized around my then-recent book on their 1979 debut album.
It was November of 2017, and for three nights the feminist punks of New York City and beyond had overtaken the storied Manhattan art space The Kitchen. “We can’t hear a word they say,” Kathleen Hanna sang vulnerably. I sat on a plastic chair and watched in disbelief. “ For Tammy Rae,” the melancholy daydream of a closer from 1993’s Pussy Whipped, was the first Bikini Kill song I ever saw live. Every song is incredible, it clocks in under 20 minutes, and contains some of their best material.What if girls owned the world? Bikini Kill once wrote a song about that deeply utopian idea. If there is one thing here that must be heard, it's this. A posthumous compilation, The Singles, was put out in 1998. It's a bit poppier than their prior releases, but still just as strong. It's follow-up, Reject All American, was released in 1996, a year before they broke up.
Their debut LP, Pussy Whipped, came out in 1994, and is a definite essential here. Both their first EP and split would later be compiled on The CD Version Of The First Two Records, which is aptly titled. Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah was originally released as a split with another band, Huggy Bear, and was the first appearance of their signature anthem, "Rebel Girl". It was followed up by their first official release, a self-titled EP in 1992 that began their relationship with Kill Rock Stars (a fantastic label). Revolution Girl Style Now! was their debut, a self-released demo that came out in 1991 (and reissued in 2015).
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