Le Tigre: Le Tigre
Reviewed as part of Addison Godel's Desert Island Collection
My friend Travis recently explained that he sold his copy of this record because "for two years, at every single party I went to, they played the entire album straight through." It hasn't been quite two years for me, but I've experienced something similar. This record seems to be all the hipsters' first choice for getting bodies moving, making the dance floor (or kitchen or living room as the case may be) ready to jump, stomp, and laugh with delight.
How
many other political records can pull that off in this day and age?
Le Tigre is a feminist record, no two straws about it. The clearest disclaimer comes on "Hot Topic," a song that sounds a lot like "I Dig Rock & Roll Music" whose lyrics amount to a litany of the band's ideological and artistic inspirations: "Gayatri Spivak and Angela Davis, Laurie Weeks and Dorothy Allison... don't you stop, please don't stop." Left-thinking messages crop up elsewhere: "My My Metrocard" gleefully places its heroine on the run in New York from Rudy Giuliani and irately observes "Workfare! Does not work..." And on "Dude Yr So Crazy!!!" a creepy atmosphere of plinky synths and strange moans backs up a clipped, beat-poet depiction of a chauvanist film professor (or possibly fellow student):
So defeated / Thinks it's funny / Film festival / Retro porn [...] Hawaiian shirt / Buddy buddy / Just chillin' / Crystal Meth / Big budget / Dirty hair / Anti-PC / Dive bar
The legitimacy and personal origins of political feminist anger are evoked clearly and compellingly; these are theme songs for latter-day riot-grrrls, but they aren't just shouted sloganeering (the band's second album, Feminist Sweepstakes, suffers for its preaching-to-the-choir tendencies). We relate to the songs first as incredible dance grooves (more on that below), second as the sincere personal sharing of its creators, and third as a political statement. The personal level is most touchingly evoked on the closer, a childhood narrative titled "Les and Ray" which acts, along with "Hot Topic," as a historical touchstone:
"Nine years old and climbing out the house, through a song played on piano by my neighbors Les and Ray [...] You were my oxygen, the thing that made me think I could escape... This is a thank-you song for Les and Ray."
Those lines capture something that is very important, I think, for understanding this album: it's crucial to the band that they make their music. The intensity of some of the songs seems almost melodramatic until the listener realizes that the band really, really believes that these stories need to be told. This isn't just a dancing lark for them - although certainly it works as one; the whole album beams with propulsive lo-fi synthesizers, chunky drum machine beats, and shout-along choruses. "The The Empty" ("I went to your concert and I didn't feel anything!") and "Deceptacon" ("Who took the bomp from the bomp-a-lomp-a-lomp?") cast this do-it-yourself intensity as a manifesto, or an ultimatum: It's no longer okay for bands to sing about absolute nonsense that they don't care about on any personal or political level. This record was published in 1999, a time when music needed sincerity and fiery passion more than perhaps any previous point in pop history. Following up the explosion of riot-grrrl punk in the mid-90s, Le Tigre continues the feminist attempt to reclaim the power of rock and roll towards a cause that means something to its supporters. It's an incredible step.