LE TIGRE – Le Tigre - LP - Vinyl

LP - Black Vinyl

The debut effort from Le Tigre sounds like the best new wave album not to come from the 1980s. Here, Kathleen Hanna expands on the lo-fi sounds she tinkered with on her debut solo album, Julie Ruin. Le Tigre melds punk, new wave, and hip-hop into a seemingly cute package. Each song is hummable, and Hanna's "valley girl intelligentsia" voice is perfectly deceptive.

In Deceptacon, a song loaded with the kind of simple contradictions that made Kurt Cobain's lyrics so effective, Hanna sings, "Let me hear you depoliticize my rhyme." What's Yr Take on Cassavetes is the best song about an auteur since King Missile's Martin Scorsese. My My Metrocard and Les and Ray, two of the best songs on the album, display a welcome sort of contradiction: both songs seem to be about escape and exploration ("Think I'll go a little/but then I go far"), but the catchy hooks of these tunes are inescapable.

With Bikini Kill, Hanna's politics were as subtle as the Empire State Building. But with Le Tigre, as with the great Tom Tom Club song Genius of Love, the listener is left not only humming and dancing but exploring the wealth of reference material hidden within its confines.

Tracklist: 

A1 Deceptacon
A2 Hot Topic
A3 What's Yr Take On Cassavetes?
A4 The The Empty
A5 Phanta
A6 Eau D'Bedroom Dancing
B1 Let's Run
B2 My My Metrocard
B3 Friendship Station
B4 Slideshow At Free University
B5 Dude. Yr So Crazy!
B6 Les And Ray