Le Tigre - Nottingham Social Bar, 29th May 2002.
Le Tigre - Nottingham Bodega, 2002.
LE TIGRE LIVE
Nottingham Social Bar – 29/05/2002
Nottingham Social Bar – 29/05/2002
When the news broke that Bikini Kill’s Kathleen
Hanna was in a new pop band, Le Tigre, people got
worried. Can how can you make pop
music, happy sounding music, with political and vitriolic lyrics? It can’t be
easy, but Le Tigre pull it off well.
Taking to the stage at Nottingham Social, the screaming
anger of Bikini Kill and Julie Ruin but a
distant memory, we’re treated to a mixture of lo-fi electronic pop dance music,
feminist ideology, short films, and synchronized dance action to songs like What’s
your take on Cassavettes and LT tour theme,
synchronized dance action that makes want in on the dance action. Even the
harder tracks such as Yr Critique, and My Art,
ooze a creeping funkiness.
These are songs that make you dance, but they make you think
too. When I say Le Tigre are pop, I don’t mean it in the S Club 7 sense, I mean
proper pop music that makes you want to get moving and thinking. Take a song
like Keep on Livin, a song based on the emotional turmoil of
expressing your true self within a society that can’t deal with anything other
than what the media deems to be ‘normal’, yet remaining totally fun sounding
and funky. That is no mean feat to pull off, and when it is, it shouldn’t be taken
for granted. This is how all pop music should be, In your face, without being
so confrontational that you have to back off.
The audience tonight certainly embraced Le Tigre,
and it showed, Kathleen, JD, and Johanna looked like they were enjoying every
second on stage, and announced that they were genuinely taken aback with how
Nottingham received them. And let’s
face it, they’re not the type of people to spit out the same old rock and roll
cliche's!
It seems Le Tigre are really
hitting their stride now. They have the
right attitude and they have the tunes. Let’s hope they bring us plenty more to
keep us thinking and dancing!
