BIKINI KILL: PUSSY WHIPPED (1993)
1) Blood One; 2) Alien She; 3)
Magnet; 4) Speed Heart; 5) Lil Red; 6) Tell Me So; 7) Sugar; 8) Star Bellied
Boy; 9) Hamster Baby; 10) Rebel Girl; 11) Star Fish; 12) For Tammy Rae.
Since this is the band's first, loudest, and
most straightforward full-fledged LP, it has become the classic point of first reference for Bikini Kill — but it is
not easy to say something about it that has not already been said in the context
of discussing the first EPs. In fact, Pussy
Whipped plays off the idea that nobody has probably heard those EPs,
because they go to the trouble of re-recording ʽRebel Girlʼ — in an inferior
version, I might add, with noticeably lower fidelity and with a surprisingly
tamer guitar tone from Billy.
Of course, the band in general is anything but
tame: Hannah's screeching has only got wilder, to the extent that it is nigh
impossible to decipher the sound waves battering against the poor microphone. Maybe
it's all for the better — it is hard not to cringe at all the «radical feminist»
dribble that is delivered non-stop without the slightest hint of humor or irony
("your alphabet is spilled with my blood", "all you do is
destroy", etc.). Then again, I would be lying if I said that every song on
here qualifies as a straightforwardly dumb anthem; and I would also be lying if
I said that songs like ʽStar Bellied Boyʼ or ʽSugarʼ, decrying brutal sexist
attitudes of guys who treat girls like fuckmeat, had nothing to do with reality
— for justice' sake, it would constitute a good balance to have ʽStar Bellied
Boyʼ sitting next to, say, the Rolling Stones' ʽStupid Girlʼ as a
call-and-answer thing on ridiculing stereotypes.
Anyway, the real
bad news is that the music is still being treated like a bitch. All the riffs
have been pilfered, as usual, from the band's favorite recordings by the
Troggs, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols, so that the record rides exclusively
on attitude — and the attitude never varies from song to song, depending only
on whether Hannah plays it completely straight or gets a little theatrical (on
ʽSugarʼ, she spends some time mocking and parodying the «pornstar approach»
towards guys, before cutting the crap and asking it straight — "why can't
I ever get my sugar?"; right next to it, ʽStar Bellied Boyʼ culminates in
a frantic "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't cum!" that really shows all that dumbass guy how
much of a pathetic «hero» he really is).
To those listeners who think that only the
spirit matters, these forty minutes may seem like a single, super-concentrated energy
punch, a nuclear warhead of an album that takes the feminist revolution in art
to a whole new level. Myself, I don't see the principal progress over Patti
Smith, who was a better poet, had a more professional musical backing, occasionally
authored catchy songs, and was at least as ballsy as Hannah. But yeah, Bikini
Kill make more noise, and all their riffs are thick, crunchy, and distorted to
the max.
Oh, I forgot: the last song here breaks the
trend — it is nothing less than a ballad,
dedicated to Tammy Rae Carland, a lesbian artist friend of theirs who also
designed the album cover. Its compositional genius could probably be matched
by a five-year old Paul McCartney, its catchiness factor drops well below zero,
but the artistic statement of finishing this hyper-aggressive package with a
sweet-but-not-too-sentimental confession of love (for that one person who might probably be able to finally make
Kathleen cum!) cannot be beat.
As a final disclaimer, I have to say, of
course, that I only feel somewhat qualified to dismiss Pussy Whipped as a «musical» non-entity — as to what concerns its
power and authenticity as a social performance act, well, I guess that guys
have about as much business discussing this stuff as propagating their views on
abortion. In a way, it might be so that Hannah and her friends are simply doing
here the kind of thing that should have been done a long time ago — that, as a
girl band, they are simply «ideologically catching up» with the hardcore punk aesthetics.
It is true that, even if musically Bikini Kill are not doing anything in 1993 that
could not have already been done in 1983, or even in 1977-79, for that matter,
there was no band quite like Bikini
Kill (music, lyrics, image combined) circa 1977-79 or 1983, and that should get
you a-thinkin'. Maybe if all these songs had been written in 1977, I would not
be tempted to snicker at them so much.
Nevertheless, I am here primarily to opinionate
on the music, not on the ideology, and from that point of view, if you come
here searching for music, I have no right to recommend Pussy Whipped, an album whose chief target audience, so I'd think,
would consist of sexually oppressed mid-to-low-class young females in need of a
psychological crash course on how to defend yourself (nothing to laugh about,
actually — far be it from me to deny the grave seriousness of this issue!). So
remember this, ladies: next time you find yourself sexually harassed by your
male chauvinist pig employer / colleague / high school «admirer», just put up
ʽBlood Oneʼ or ʽStar Bellied Boyʼ as your ringtone, and watch his allegedly mighty
tool wither on the spot.
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