RSSThe Julie Ruin [extended]
- Julie Ruin [Kill Rock Stars, 1998] B-
- Run Fast [TJR, 2013] A
- Hit Reset [Hardly Art, 2016] A-
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Consumer Guide Reviews:
Julie Ruin: Julie Ruin [Kill Rock Stars, 1998]
"What would `L'Ecriture Feminine' sound like as music?" the once and future Kathleen Hanna asked herself, and if this is the answer we're in trouble. It sounds like Calvin Johnson prattle, it sounds like she needs all that sound equipment she can't afford, it sounds like she took her bat and went home. It's fine to reject confessional for narrative if you have some fictional craft, fine to let machines do the playing if you can figure out how to make them sing, but so far Hanna doesn't and hasn't. Instead she takes the obscure rants that were so compelling at Bikini Kill decibels and murmurs them into her cheap mike at two in the morning, if we're lucky to one of the simple tunes that provide meaning in a band context and relief in this. "I don't expect people to like it or anything," she told some zine, and here's hoping they don't. She's 29, and she needs to move on. B-
Run Fast [TJR, 2013]
Although I read in the Times that late-stage Lyme disease sufferer Kathleen Hanna's first album since 2004 includes "several peppy numbers about euthanasia," I dare you to figure out which they are. What's easy to tell is that at 44, the riot godmotherrr commands pretty much the same old skinny soprano, only with soft edges that sound tender or thoughtful sometimes. You can make out enough lyrics to determine that these vulnerabilities don't come at the cost of crazee abandon, modulated tantrum, or childish drawl. And you soon realize that the music continues a trajectory that runs from Bikini Kill through Le Tigre to this version of the pop music every great punk loves: surf guitar, bongo effects, keyboard hooks from Hammond to EDM, and--crucially, I think--a male voice on occasion, mostly for deep ballast. Some say she's from Mars, or one of the seven stars that shine after 3:30 in the morning. But she isn't. A
Julie Ruin: Hit Reset [Hardly Art, 2016]
After years of illness, 47-year-old Kathleen Hanna still has the same girlish voice she did with Bikini Kill at 21, small and cute. But unlike Astrud Gilberto, say, she's tended to weaponize it. Le Tigre had a sisterly ebullience sometimes, and on her 2013 Julie Ruin comeback she sounded so glad to be alive everything else was secondary. But here she's grrrlish once again, proudly indulging her inner brat as she and her crack electropunk band launch putdown after empowering putdown at a fearsome dad, a pickup creep, a bullshitting promoter, a pushy fan, a pushier friend, a troll, and assorted conversationalists. Since the most painful and effective of these seems to implore a lifemate "Let Me Go," it's a relief when the enigmatic finale wonders quietly what made her think she could fly and then thanks the unspecified person who gave her the courage to try. A-