At the end of a joyous, high-volume 70-minute set at Washington, DC’s Black Cat, the Linda Lindas had ten musicians on stage, careening about the suddenly cramped space, blasting out their signature cover of Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl.” In addition to her on-stage friends, Lindas’ bassist Eloise Wong was joined by about 700 fans shouting out…
“Rebel girl, rebel girl – Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world – Rebel girl, rebel girl – I think I wanna take you home – I want to try on your clothes, uh…”
This is the second time the quartet from SoCal – Wong on bass, Bela Salazar and Lucia de la Garza on guitars, and Mila de la Garza on drums – has paid a visit to the nation’s capital in the past year. Last summer, the Lindas opened for Green Day on their national tour that included a stop at Nationals Park.
Linda Lindas never cease to entertain
Despite their youth – at 20, Salazar is the oldest Linda, while Mila de la Garza doesn’t turn 15 until later this year – the band was not overwhelmed by the 50,000 fans who had turned up to hear Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, and Rancid last July. But they were even better headlining at the iconic, intimate Black Cat.
The Linda Lindas have been steeped in classic punk from an early age. They have performed with Kathleen Hanna, frontwoman of Bikini Kill and one of their biggest inspirations. In addition to opening for Green Day, they have also toured in support of Paramore. Last Summer, when the Rolling Stones played in SoCal, the Lindas opened for them as well.
Because all four members of the band share in the songwriting and take turns singing lead, they can create a wide range of music under the broad punk and post-punk labels. In general, Wong, who commands the center of the stage with her boisterous energy, takes on the punk screamers. Lucia, who addresses the crowd the most, tends to handle the more melodic pop numbers.
Salazar, the most reserved member of the group, sings everything in between, including the three Spanish-language numbers they did at the Black Cat. Mila, from behind her drum kit in the back, sings several duets and takes lead on a song or two as well.
The crowd they attract is equally diverse. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a loud punk show that had so many middle-aged moms and dads in attendance, along with their teen and pre-teen kids. It was mostly girls, and they were mostly sitting atop dads' shoulders or standing atop stools, dancing all night. Some of the parents were dancing too, but many were filming their kids.
As for the setlist, the Lindas played their entire 2024 album No Obligations, along with about half of their debut, Growing Up. Eloise kicked things off with a roaring rendition of the title track to No Obligations, before Bela belted out “Resolution/Revolution.” Eloise busted one of her bass strings in the middle of that song.
Bela later sang a Talking Heads cover, “Found a Job,” a song the Lindas recorded as part of a tribute album dedicated to Stop Making Sense, released last May. In addition to the the Bikini Kill closer, they played two other covers: “Tren al Sur,” by pioneering Chilean punk rockers Los Prisioneros (on which Mila’s drums sounded like a train), and a tune they may have picked up while touring last summer – Green Day’s “When I Come Around.”
The rest of the night was all Lindas' originals. From the full-on punk metal attack of “Excuse Me” to the ode to their now-famous cat “Nino,” the best dance number in a night of great dance tunes. Toward the end, Eloise and Mila teamed up on the song that made them famous several years ago – the vitriolic “Racist Sexist Boy.”
Eloise’s T-shirt sported the saying “Qué es más punk que la biblioteca pública” (“What is more punk than the public library?”). The Lindas’ performance of “Racist Sexist Boy” at a public library back in 2021 resulted in the viral video that helped launch them.
Sandwiched between the Green Day and the Bikini Kill covers in the encore, Lucia’s gorgeous “All in My Head” showed why the Linda Lindas have become much more than a novelty act. They can be loud and angry – they can be introspective and melodic. Between those two poles, they never seem the least bit inauthentic.
They are evolving musicians who are already one of the best rock and roll bands in the country, and they're getting better.
Ashrita Kumar led their Baltimore-based rockers Pinkshift through an aggressively upbeat forty-minute opening set. Pinkshift, a trio of multi-ethnic musicians who met while studying science and engineering at Johns Hopkins University just before the pandemic, now perform live as a quintet.
Kumar, along with Wong and de la Garza, repeated messages directly aimed at those young girls dancing in the crowd. “You can do this too!” was the gist of the message, though they added more colorful language to make the point.
The girls in the crowd – whether roaming the floor with friends or dancing atop the shoulders of their parents – seemed to know that already.
The Linda Lindas have a few more shows in the northeast this week before most of them have to return to high school.