Audio By Carbonatix
Gotta get this out of the way right now: Neither band gracing the stage February 27 at the Galaxy is worth much anymore. Don’t get me wrong: One used to be worth quite a lot, and the other used to be a good joke, but tonight, today, right now, Bratmobile (the former worth-its) and the Donnas (the former good joke) are just two more groups trying to make a buck on the endless highway of America’s indie-rock touring circuit.
It didn’t have to be this way. In 1993, Bratmobile was one of the most exciting bands in this country. That year’s Pottymouth was one of riot grrrl’s defining texts, a 20-minute cherry bomb of a debut album and the kind of musical-political statement legacies are built on. Which one pretty much was, which is why Bratmobile is gassing up in Dallas, which is the problem. After riot grrrl’s first generation of bands–Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, British co-conspirators Huggy Bear–fucked things up for a few years, a new generation took the baton and ran with it–bands such as Sleater-Kinney and Sarge–keeping alive and kicking what the instigators had birthed. That’s the good news. The bad is that Bratmobile is back at it again but without any changes to the original formula, no compensation for lost time.
Bikini Kill stuck around for a few years after the media hype died down, too, but it took the opportunity to become a better band, making the transition from one-chord punks to two-chord garage rockers with the elegance you’d expect from a band that used to make mottos out of smart bombs like “Suck My Left One.” But Bratmobile just sort of idled, taking a couple of years for the members to do their own things–singer Allison Wolfe and guitarist Erin Smith formed the Cold Cold Hearts; drummer Molly Neuman played in the Peechees–and eventually reconvening after some personal tensions resolved themselves. Their new Ladies, Women and Girls isn’t bad music, but save for a few moments of quietly bruising introspection from Wolfe, it’s not interesting music, either, relying on the same old shake-it-up sonics and rah-rah polemics the band discovered in the basement 10 years ago. Back then, this stuff sounded like–fuck that: It was a battle cry; today, it just sounds like an echo.
Still, I’d rather listen to an echo for 45 minutes than a bad one-liner. Or four, if you count each Donna separately. In 1998, when the band released American Teenage Rock & Roll Machine, the world gasped, marveling at the way these young women turned the riot grrrls’ sex-positive ethos into a sort of cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof prowler mentality. That’s a pretty neat trick–after all, Joan Jett had taken up with Bikini Kill in recent years–and one worth exploring over a few seven-inch singles. Thing is, the Donnas have done it over four LPs, all the while forgetting to develop and willfully becoming a caricature of themselves (new album title: The Donnas Turn 21). Proponents may argue that popular male performers do the same thing for years and make a fortune doing it, but whoever said Mark McGrath was an important artist?
