Les Baton Rouge
My Body – The Pistol (Elevator Music) Call Homeland Security, the Portuguese have landed! Les Baton wild woman Suspiria Franklyn is an unabashed revolutionary. Her womanifesto promotes “feminism and equal rights while fighting for musical renovation,” and you gotta be from some outpost like Portugal to get away with this literal political sentiment, lest you be deigned uncool by tedious anti-intellectuals. Franklyn’s earnest call-up comes in the form of cryptic English slogans cobbled together in operatic drill sergeant yowls reminiscent of early-Eighties ladies Nina Hagen, Siouxsie Sioux, and Liliput, that challenge body politics and the bodies politic in a hot lather of pro-sex and pro-woman propaganda. Didacticism aside, the lyrics seem culled from a decidedly ESL perspective, with quirky stanzas chosen as much for their sound, crunch, and visceral viscosity as for any specific meaning (“I’m sugar, you’re screwed. Are you ready to do it?”). It’s so punk that Austin legend Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Poison 13) produced it. Their sensibilities – screaming guitars, pummeling bass, tribal drums, shameless optimism in love with sneering cynicism – are dead-on ’77-’81. LBR makes it easy to imagine life without shoegazers, grunge, hair bands, or hair-band revisionism (aaaahhhh!). The time is ripe. Sexy, saucy Les Baton Rouge is one step back from the riot grrrls, two steps forward. Now that the rest of the indie world finally acknowledges the Raincoats, Slits, et al., perhaps this logical back-to-the-future evolution won’t suffer the same taunts of unsolicited dismissal from the XY crowd. (Saturday, March 20, 10pm @ Pyramids)
This article appears in March 19 • 2004.