Feminist, lesbian rock hits a high-note with Le Tigre

By Brian Spiegel
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer

Of all the giant bands and perpetually hyped artists of last summer's Coachella 2004, one band stood out over the long, long desert weekend. Le Tigre happened to be the last band of the weekend, going on at 11 p.m. Sunday, but frankly they stole the whole damn show.

Le Tigre has been playing music for years now, ever since the demise of lead singer Kathleen Hanna's old band Bikini Kill. Their brand of feminist New York keyboard rock is both catchy and dance inducing and at the same time thought provoking. The girls of the band recently began their LA swing of their nation-wide tour for their new album "This Island."

The album is full of crunchy guitars and pixie-like screams from Hanna and co-lead singers Johanna Fateman and JD Samson.

Le Tigre's Nov. 13 show at The Glass House in Pomona was similar to the fun show which the band put on in the chilly night air of Coachella's closing night — only this time it was in a sweltering club. It got so hot upfront that the band had to stop twice while security rescued fainting girls from the front of the crowd. The band seemed genuinely worried, a nice change from most bands who don't seem to care a lick about their audience.

The band's 17-song set incorporated a lot of their catalog including several new songs. They opened their set with "TKO," a song which came off rather well but did not have the opening power of their next song, the feminist anthem, "F.Y.R."

Most of Le Tigre's stage show involves B-52-style dancing and some choreographed moves. The crowd loved every second of it, dancing along on such songs as "What's Yr Take On Cassavetes" and the set ending "Deceptacon." The band got political on "Seconds," a song which, as they announced, is a song about President George W. Bush (the chorus involves repetitive screams of "You make me sick"). Even if you don't agree with the politics, the song has a great sound with fast drums beats and keyboards that sound a bit like something you would hear on a BS2000 album.

The band's set lasted a paltry 55 minutes (way too short if you ask me), with a 10-minute encore which featured a cover of the Pointer Sister's "I'm So Excited," a song in which you could really see how much their fans are dedicated to the band. I've never seen a full audience actually dance during a song but literally everyone in attendance was moving their rump. This seems a little cliche, but Le Tigre might have the most dedicated fans in rock music today.

The San Francisco band Willpower and the Montreal band Lesbians on Ecstasy opened the Le Tigre show. Willpower was, well, interesting. Basically they are a five member band with one person playing beats on his Mac, another person singing vocals and three members doing choreographed dances that would make Napoleon Dynamite proud. The band was musically bland but visually a lot more interesting. It was like watching that Fatboy Slim video, "Praise You," where that dance troupe was dancing outside a movie theatre, except this wasn't staged.

Lesbians on Ecstasy is a four-piece keyboard-led band dressed in Adidas warm up jackets. Their image bled New York; they looked like the kind of band who constantly plays the underground clubs, selling tickets to loyal fans that have seen them ten times or more. Musically they sounded like the Coachella dance tent, with a bass line that made your ears want to bleed and drumbeats that made your heart beat irregularly.

It was a good show, and the people in attendance took the good with the bad. While Willpower and Lesbians on Ecstasy were a nice distraction, Le Tigre rocked, and seeing them was well worth the price of the ticket alone.