The riot grrrls have been claiming a space in rock music for more than thirty years now. Like any long-tenured movement, it has morphed through the years. It has been disavowed and rebirthed, denigrated and deified. It is not so old that its progenitors are still around, blessing a new generation, but it is not so young as to hide its second-guessing and self-doubt. That helps explain why the movement remains intriguing.
But it remains primarily relevant because, in 2024, female rock and roll artists continue to face misogyny, discrimination, and pigeonholing from every corner of the music world. From labels. From fellow musicians. From fans. At times, from themselves.
Fortunately, we’ve come a long way in the past sixty years, when the Quatro Sisters began blasting out garage rock that rivaled any boy band of the era but couldn’t get a sniff of a record deal. Maybe they could turn down the volume, sweeten their voices and their lyrics, and make it as pop stars. But they could not rock.
Riot grrrls are still a force in rock music
Today, female-fronted rock bands are not uncommon. And many are content to be just that – hard rocking bands, undefined by their sex. Even the most riotous of the riot grrrl bands felt the need to sometimes step away from their mission. They didn’t want to have to be constantly singing about female empowerment. That would get tiresome pretty fast.
But the misogyny and the discrimination and the pigeonholing didn’t vanish, and so the need to speak out about it – or scream out about it – remained. It remains to this day. Let’s check out three recent releases that show where the riot grrrls have gone and the kinds of music they are producing in the Fall of 2024. Because this music, after more than thirty years, remains at the forefront of interesting, powerful rock & roll.
“Tiny Bikini” by Amyl and the Sniffers
Amy Gordon has been fronting Amyl and the Sniffers for ten years now. On their third album, Cartoon Darkness, Gordon said she used a different process to write her lyrics than on previous releases. She would work alone, after her three bandmates – Declan Mehrtens, Gus Romer, and Bryce Wilson – would lay down different music tracks. She explained that the boys played loud, and she sometimes felt that she had to shout even louder to make her voice heard when they were creating together.
Well, on Cartoon Darkness, Gordon is still shouting, but there is a knowing incisiveness to her words that describe the particular place that a female rocker occupies in today’s music world. The album itself talks a lot about the anonymous potshots she has absorbed through internet trolls on songs like the album opener, “Jerkin’,” and its closing track, “Me and the Girls.”
On “Tiny Bikini,” she makes her most overt statement about feminine appearance in a male-dominated world over Mehrtens’ crunchy guitar and Wilson's pounding drums. Gordon has that rare ability to couch her anger in the guise of a fun romp of a song.
“Ballistic” by Eville
“This rage that I’m feeling is silently seething – This pain that I’m feeling is violently bleeding – Do not tell me to smile – I’m feeling volatile – I’ll smash through the ceiling and stamp on the pieces.” That’s how Eva Sheldrake begins Eville’s latest single, “Ballistic.” But it is framed by a male voice that utters a foul-mouthed threat that I cannot repeat here. If I did, I would have to bleep out virtually everything that Sheldrake is hearing.
“Ballistic” follows “Blood,’ a different take on female rage. The new song makes “Blood” sound tame and melodious. Sheldrake begins in a drone over hammering drums but soon begins a feral scream in support of going ballistic. A wave of distorted guitar overwhelms the tiny male voice that reappears impotently at the end. But it never overwhelms Sheldrake.
“Love” by Lambrini Girls
The current champions of loud, angry, thrashing riot grrrl power are Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira, whose first full-length album, Who Let the Dogs Out, arrives in January. All three songs already released – “Company Culture,” “Big Dick Energy," and the brand new “Love” – address the inequal way men and women interact from different angles. “Love” focuses more on the interpersonal, centered around Lunny’s repeated warning “True love is nothing more than the wrong hill to die on.”
The earlier singles were more outward, critiquing the culture at large. In “Love,” Lambrini Girls question the very possibility of any kind of balanced relationship, at times mocking the "true love" notion that girls are raised with. It ends with a somber Lunny intoning “I’m so sorry for letting you down.” But then she shouts and the band takes off on another minute of splashing drums and swirling guitars that suggests maybe she isn’t that sorry after all.
Being a riot grrrl means cutting way back on the apologies.