Seven years is no mean feat for a young band under such pressure. “There were interpersonal conflicts,” says Vail. Photograph: Alice WheelerĪfter releasing three albums, Bikini Kill played their last show in Tokyo in 1997. Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail on stage in 1995. Their success can’t be overstated: it’s impossible to imagine today’s landscape without riot grrrl. On the rare occasion that Bikini Kill did speak to the press, it wasn’t to promote their work but, says Vail, “to encourage girls everywhere to start their own bands”. People can’t even hear what you’re saying because it’s filtered through these institutions.” The riot grrrl movement encouraged boycotting the media. “It’s upsetting now, so imagine processing that at the time. “It was extremely sexist and condescending,” says Vail of the coverage. The male-dominated music press frequently mocked the band (“Moronic nag-unto-vomit tantrums over stock school-of-Sabbath riffage,” wrote Rolling Stone of their self-titled 1993 EP) or seemed intentionally to misinterpret them: Hanna was repeatedly and wrongly portrayed as a survivor of incestuous abuse. Other feminist punks decried Hanna after the media crowned her the leader of a supposedly non-hierarchical scene. While celebrated by peers such as Kurt Cobain (Hanna wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on his bedroom wall, inspiring Nirvana’s biggest hit), they were often abused at shows, with some men turning up specifically to cause trouble. At gigs, they famously brought “girls to the front” to provide a sanctuary from the aggression of male-dominated punk shows. Bikini Kill tackled rape culture, female solidarity and the pursuit of pleasure in Hanna’s confrontational sing-song vocals, backed by abrasive, lo-fi playing. The riot grrrl movement, founded by a coterie of like-minded bands and zine-makers nationwide, was about reclaiming a girlhood spoiled by misogyny. In the wilds of early 90s Olympia, in America’s Pacific Northwest, Bikini Kill’s “revolution girl style now” aimed to radicalise girls and women to take direct action against sexism. Indeed, it’s hard to tell whether it’s depressing or galvanising that a mission begun three decades ago still feels so relevant. “It doesn’t feel like an irrelevant, punk oldies thing.” She is firm that this it isn’t just a nostalgia trip. Vail is calling from LA, singer Kathleen Hanna’s adopted home town, where the group have been rehearsing prior to the first leg of their tour in the US. It “felt right”, says Vail, so they decided to do more shows. If we see historicisation as an institutional force, let’s be inclusive: let women’s voices in.” After that night, Bikini Kill watched as fans called their brief performance a “reunion”. To me, that’s what being a band allows you to access. “They were telling their story on their own terms,” recalls Vail. In that room, Vail witnessed a group often erased from the punk canon writing their own history. They’d been asked to play a song at a New York event in honour of the Raincoats, prompted by a book about the London-based feminist punk group’s self-titled 1979 album. “Going back in time doesn’t make sense to me.” It wasn’t until 2017, two decades after they’d parted ways, that the pioneering riot grrrl band witnessed a model for doing it.
“It wasn’t something that crossed my mind as a possibility or anything that I would want to do,” says drummer Tobi Vail.