Le Tigre: Feminist Sweepstakes : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The punk-rock moment begins with somebody learning how to make a noise of her own; for the moment to keep rolling, somebody has to learn how to turn that noise into a musical language. Enter Le Tigre, the feminist punk threesome of Johanna Fateman, JD Samson and former Bikini Kill vocalist Kathleen Hanna. After a slamming 1999 debut and an erratic follow-up EP, Le Tigre have settled into a groove of righteous New Wave party rants, all bleeping synths and squealing guitars and dance-this-mess-around disco drum machines. In a symbolic coup, they've enlisted producer Chris Stamey from North Carolina indie-pop legends the dBs, but more important, they've also finished a bunch of hysterically funny, shamelessly political and musically intense pop tunes. The sentimental favorite has to be "LT Tour Theme," where our heroines chant, "For the ladies and the fags, yeah/We're the band with the roller-skate jams." But in the fractured funk and raw emotion of "Fake French," "My Art" and "Well Well Well," the unstoppable rebel grrrls of Le Tigre keep tinkering with punk rock until they come up with brand-new kicks.

ROB SHEFFIELD
(RS 880 - October 25, 2001)