Le Tigre: the do-it-yourself doyennes of political dance-punk are looking to rouse music from its apathetic slumber with a fiery new album and a furious dos of activism

Interview, Sept, 2004 by Stephen Mooallem

What becomes a Riot Grrrl most? In the case of Kathleen Hanna, former front woman for the feminist punk band Bikini Kill, it's a bona fide dust kicker. This Island (Strummer/Universal), Hanna's latest effort with her dance-punk outfit, Le Tigre, is that rare thing: a party record that ventures from driving political rockers to melodic post-punk dance anthems.

STEPHEN MOOALLEM: Because of Bikini Kill, a lot of people think of you primarily as a feminist artist. But you have worked hard to expand both the scope of your work and the sphere of people you're reaching out to. Has that been a conscious effort?

KATHLEEN HANNA: It's difficult. So many people tend to just deal with Le Tigre as a band, and me as an artist, in terms of gender alone, which can be really frustrating. When I started out, I was working at an organization for women who were victims of domestic violence, and the main reason I was in the band was so I could talk about the program between shows: That was how I got into music. But being in a country that's constantly going to war, and with all the things we've been involved in over the past 10 years, it's hard to have just a tiny agenda. Turning 30 also played a big part. At a certain point, you start to realize what is petty and what is not. [laughs]

SM: Bikini Kill was more a straight-ahead punk band, but one thing that comes through on This Island is that you have a really dynamic voice. You sound like Johnny Rotten on some songs, and Madonna on others--on one song, you even rap. Do you feel more comfortable moving into these different areas now?

KH: Oh, definitely! I was always obsessed with 1980s music, as well as with artists like Yaz and Alison Moyet and Lesley Gore. Public Enemy was also huge for me. I used to listen to them when I jogged because it gave me so much oompah-pah. [laughs] It's not like I really hid those influences when I was with Bikini Kill; it's just that they weren't allowed to come out because of who we were and what we were trying to do.

SM: Tell me about "New Kicks."

KH: That song is almost like an audio documentary. People go to protests these days like they did in the 1960s, but the thing that we don't have today is the easily singable "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore"-type political songs. So we were like, "We have to make one now for our generation." J.D. [Samson] had taken her video camera with her to an antiwar march in New York earlier this year, so we took the audio and spliced together all these sound bites of people talking. We had to get in touch with people like Al Sharpton and Susan Sarandon for permission to use their voices--Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone made Born on the Fourth of July [1989] about, actually sent us an e-mail thanking us for including him. The nicest thing about "New Kicks" is that it's not just about our band. The real stars of the song are all the people who showed up to the protest and who are staying politically engaged even when there's so much pressure to be apathetic.

SM: Then on the lighter side you cover the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited."

KH: We'd been talking about wanting to do a great "cardio" song because we've been performing live so much lately. It's a nice song to sort of break the ice. It is really weird in the context of the rest of the album, but what the hell? We're Pointer Sisters fans. [laughs]

SM: It's fantastic--and unexpected. Do you feel more free to do stuff like that now?

KH: I just think I used to be more insecure. When Bikini Kill started, I was really young, and feminism was saving my life. You know, I felt like I existed for the first time, and everything was opening up for me. It was like, I just want to get my ideas out. But now I'm much more interested in being creative with how those ideas are communicated. When you get into that mode where everything's about self-sacrifice, you're just going to end up burning yourself out. And your music will start to seem like the work of a person who's doing their duty, as opposed to somebody who is really joyous about what they do. You can find something you love to do, and do it in service of making the world a better place, but you don't have to do it at the exclusion of your own pleasure. If you can find a way to wrap those things up together, then that can be really infectious.

Stephen Mooallem is Interview's senior editor.