Photo by Ken Sears
Even though it's happened, I still can't believe I got to see Kathleen Hanna come through Boston twice in three months. Bikini Kill played back in April, and Le Tigre swung through this past Monday. Maybe the entire concept of seeing Bikini Kill and Le Tigre mere months apart, or maybe it was that the show had been announced six months earlier, but I almost kept forgetting it was happening. It did happen, and it was glorious.
The band opened with "My Art," a song they had not yet played on this tour. They ended up stopping it as there was some mistake, which led to a discussion of how much they liked the Netflix show Starting Over, and then Small Wonder got brought up before they realized they should get back to playing. This being Le Tigre, the crowd did not get upset at all and were willing to go along with anything.
At one point Kathleen Hanna said that she wanted the night to feel like a basement party, and despite the show being at the two thousand seat sold out Royale with a giant screen behind them showing various images and song lyrics, it kind of did. The entire performance felt much more intimate than the venue and production could have allowed. It may have been the joy the entire audience was experiencing actually seeing the Le Tigre in person.
Bikini Kill is the band of Hanna's I love, and I've always liked Le Tigre, but seeing both live, I ended up having much more fun at Le Tigre. Le Tigre is a giant party, with the crowd going absolutely nuts for most of the show. "Seconds" seemed to be the point that got the audience truly invested, followed by the band leaving the stage for a costume change during "Get Off the Internet." The band left for the encore joking that they weren't playing the song everyone liked, but then came back and of course played "Deceptacon" to close out the show. The crowd lost their minds, dancing wildly. It's the obvious song to close out with, but the recorded "See you later" towards the end made it the perfect choice. Not many shows are such fun that I end up checking resale sites for the next night, but Le Tigre had me scouring for cheap tickets.
cumgirl8 opened the night, and might have been the perfect choice. The quartet was a little more punk, but they had enough of an electroclash element to fit right in with Le Tigre, and the audience fully embraced them. They had the perfect energy level to suck the crowd in, and enough of an attitude to win everyone over. I'm looking forward to checking them out again in the hopefully near future.
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