It was a night of sequins, spandex, and raw rage as 90s Riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill hit the Agora Theatre Thursday night (09.17.26). They proved they still can and still should shake up the status quo.
This tour only has a handful of dates on it, and the room was packed with people who had traveled far and wide for the rare Midwest show. The crowd dressed for the occasion too, decked out in full punk regalia, with ripped leggings, dyed hair, and metal everywhere. One of the most surprising elements of the crowd, was just how young they skewed. People who weren’t alive for the band’s first run, or not yet of concert-going age for their 2019 reunion, singing every word to songs written before their parents met. Watching the band and the crowd interact really showed that the band was way ahead of it’s time.
Frontwoman Kathleen Hanna made it clear early on that she felt the same way about Cleveland. The Agora is apparently one of the band’s favorite places to play, and she said as much between songs, thanking Cleveland for the welcome. That comment might sound like standard stage banter, but the fact that they chose the Agora out of the limited dates on the tour made it believable. “I’m serious,” she said.
The set moved fast, most songs clocking in under three minutes. With only three albums to pull from, the band played a large portion of their catalogue, 24 songs in total. But the real trick of the night was the lineup shuffling. On the fifth song, “I Hate Danger,” drummer Tobi Vail swapped to lead vocals, bassist Kathi Wilcox moved to drums, and Hanna picked up the bass, before everyone shuffled back to their usual spots two songs later. That sort of swap happened again and again throughout the set.
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Hanna kept the crowd loose between songs too, at one point joking about her past as a dancer at a club with no windows. “Not ballet,” giving the crowd a laugh. “Which is real work as much as anything else is,” she clarified, to cheers. She explained the club’s DJ got in on the fun as well, spinning Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” over the PA just to mess with the newest member of the dancers. And that’s what she thinks of whenever they play Cleveland. The night was full of those types of asides and stories about touring, including a van break down in Lorain back in the 90s, explained Vail.
While they might not have ever been a household name, Bikini Kill’s impact on music and the trajectory of punk is undeniable. And you could feel that energy in the crowd. They thrashed, moshed, and even crowd surfed during favorites like “Carnival,” the song about teenage girls and the underbelly of the traveling carnival scene. They sang along to “Demirep,” a song that, however brief, manages to pack in everything from socioeconomics to femininity to societal rejection. It’s a poignant song from a band that is chock full of those, but it also shows the power and ability in the brevity of a truly great punk song.
Another highlight of the evening was when the band pulled a fan up on stage to sing lead on the song “Alien She,” and the fan absolutely killed it, earning one of the loudest reactions of the night. Hanna commented how she’d be out of a job before too long.
They closed with “Finale,” another great example of tightly wound punk song. The band gave Erica Dawn Lyle a little bit of room to stretch a bit on the guitar for this one, which added a nice flair on the closing out of the set. The encore was of course “Rebel Girl,” one of the band’s signature, and probably still their most well-known, song, which brought down the house.
It felt like the band had never had a near two-decade gap. Instead, over 30 years in, they proved they can still rock just as hard as they ever did, and that their songs still carry meaning today, maybe even more now than they ever did.
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