I stood next to Kathleen Hanna at a bar in Canberra once. Torn between a desire to tell how hearing Bikini Kill’s Pussy Whipped had changed my life, and a concern that relaying this objective fact would invoke Hanna’s provocative observation that men only liked female musicians whom they wanted to fuck, I remained stupidly silent, acting out the role of star-struck dork to Hanna’s charismatic punk rock chic.
Run Fast sees Hanna reviving the Julie Ruin moniker she adopted immediately after the break-up of Bikini Kill, and indulging the brazen, abrasive punk rock style that characterised her original tenure in the punk scene. And it’s just as good as ever. Oh Come On takes the basic simplicity of Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild and slaps it down with X-Ray Spex garage punk attitude, as Hanna rants and raves her disdain for the imperfections of the society in which she must exist. Ha Ha Ha blends Devo-esque electronic punk with Go Gos LA punk; Just My Kind is the intense love song only Hanna could write. Party City is sharp, snappy and sassy as all fuck, Cookie Road is 60s girl pop with a dirtbag-and-synth overlay and Right Home is PiL between into submission by Girls in the Garage.
You can throw Kids in New York on the turntable and you’re in the East Village in 1968, having the party of your life; get in your car, and drive west, and you’re basking in the warm glow of adolescent bubblegum pop in Goodnight Goodbye. South Coast Plaza is a trip down memory lane, with a mixture of nostalgia, regret and disjointed beach-punk; Girls Like Us celebrates grrlpunk against a 80s electro-synth pop soundtrack. Jump across a lane, and Stop Stop is all street-smart punk Ramones attitude, before Run Fast takes you back to Hanna’s Le Tigre-like post-electronica world replete with some well-chosen polemical observations.
Whatever the underlying Freudian reasons, Kathleen Hanna is a legend. Without her, punk rock is surely much the poorer.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track:Cookie Road
IF YOU LIKE THESE, YOU’LL LIKE THIS: BIKINI KILL (der!), SLEATER KINNEY, THE GO-GOS and X-RAY SPEX.
In A Word: Punk.
