Feminist Music Geek

Recently, my friend Ivan posted a clip on Facebook of the late, great Electrelane playing “Bells” off their penultimate Axes at a Portuguese music festival in 2007. Since I’ve been mentioning the album’s influence on my feminist development for a while, let’s get into it.

I was already a fan of the group when Axes came out. I reviewed The Power Out for KVRX, perhaps helping in some small way to make “On Parade” a college radio hit.

I only had the pleasure of seeing Electrelane in concert once, but I really couldn’t ask for a better experience. They opened for erstwhile Mr. Lady labelmates Le Tigre at Emo’s right after my birthday in 2005. Le Tigre were fine, but Electrelane were a lightning bolt into my being. Simply put, it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a band so much in control of the chaos they were making.

One thing Electrelane demonstrated for me was the power that emanates from women playing music together. I’m not referring to the novelty of it, as I wish all-female bands and female instrumentalists in mixed-gender bands were more commonplace. I’m talking about women coming together collaborate on a creative project. I believe it to be a decidedly feminist act.

Collaboration is important and should not be devalued. Often women are singled out in music culture and are expected to work alone if they choose not to work with men. I’d argue that this is true in other professions as well. In their seminal book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards mention that several women discouraged them from writing the book together, as it would not be taken seriously. I think much of this is to do with the privilege given to sole (male) authorship, and having women abide by it — if we are to follow liberal feminist principles — ensures professional advancement. I also think it’s bullshit. There is nothing weak or compromised about working with someone on a project. In my experience, it only adds depth and nuance to whatever I’m working on. I also think it helps prove that women and girls can, in fact, be civil and work together rather than tear each other apart for individual advancement. Thus, female collaborations can be politicized acts. Modeling these working strategies in public is a politicized act too. It’s why Kristen at Act Your Age and I do it whenever we can.

Though I do think there’s something distinctively female about Electrelane, I don’t think it’s their sound so much as their approach to creating that sound. There’s muscularity to it, which is bolstered by precision. Being precise may not seem a rock ideal, but it’s how they work together as a unit, even when it sounds like they are in discord or riding musical tangents. It’s the sound of work. To my ears, it’s the coiled fist and dexterous fingers of women proving they can rock even harder and tighter than the men.

And there’s just something so empowering about seeing women work together so well. And while I love Sleater-Kinney and have seen and heard some of their remarkable concert footage, their shadow may be cast over bands like Electrelane who I feel don’t get as much credit for being such a tight musical unit. Lead singer Verity Susman doesn’t have Corin Tucker’s golden wail. Neither Susman nor Mia Clarke channeled Pete Townsend’s showmanship the way Carrie Brownstein did on stage. But that doesn’t mean that these women aren’t their peers. I mean, Emma Gaze is just as mighty a drummer as Janet Weiss. As far as I’m concerned, we should link these bands together more. Maybe put them on a bill together. That’d be a hell of a reunion.

At the time of its release, many critics noted that Axes was largely instrumental. This only seemed exceptional against The Power Out, which offered lyrics written in English, French, German, and Spanish. Indeed, their debut album Rock It to the Moon was scant on lyrics as well. Apparently Susman told the NME that this was much to do with lyrics making their compositions sound predictable and too resolved. While band members considered themselves feminists, they tended not to address their politics through lyrics (though “On Parade” is absolutely about same-sex desire, and their cover of “The Partisan” is meant to be read as a protest against the Iraq War). By creating the songs as instrumentals actually gave the band more room for sonic exploration. I’d concur and often think about how dispensing with lyrics can be used toward political ends.

Sure, lyrics convey information. They also give listeners easy, sometimes profound points of identification with artists. Lyrics can be mounted as evidence. They can also be ignored, though they shouldn’t be. But as valuable as words are, they can also be limiting. They can demystify. They can be too exacting, and therefore obvious. They can fall short of delivering the message they’re attached to as well. And sometimes putting them into verses and choruses and bridges can take away the words’ charm. Instead of telling the joke, they explain it.

Some vocalists have bypassed proper lyrics, opting for gibberish, lists, scat, sloganeering, or free association. Some musicians, like Electrelane, forgo words altogether at times, and I don’t think the decision to do so should be conceptualized as a devaluation of their verbalized ideas. Rather, I think we might be able to argue that systems of language can fail women and girls, both in their musical compositions and in the larger world of cultural interaction.

Also, sometimes talking about being feminists isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to lead by example. Show, don’t tell.

Thus, they turned toward their instruments — which abide by the conventional, masculinized rock set-up, particularly channeling bands like Neu!, Can, and The Velvet Underground — to make loud, abrasive, abstract music that evolves and builds but never tends to arrive at full resolution (or “climax,” to use a masculinist term). Their compositions, and the deliberate stylistic choices they made toward repetition and dischord bring to mind Susan McClary’s seminal Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, which argues against the traditionally masculinized values of structure and resolution in canonical classical music and champions the hypnotic, dissonant, unresolved tonal quality of many female composers’ work.

In Axes, there are no proper choruses or verses. Some songs don’t even reach a proper theme. Others do, either to repeat it at length or vary it slightly with each refrain. A song will stumble upon a melody as if by accident, and then deny the listener a chance to re-engage with a familiar tune. The band has already moved on and will not be returning unless they feel like it. Nothing is fixed. It’s not taking the master’s tools to dismantle his house, but it feels pretty close to me at times. Re-enlisting veteran engineer Steve Albini after his work on The Power Out and recording together in one room domesticates their sound in surprising ways, and roughs up staid notions of female domesticity. Having Susman stab at her piano – once a symbol of proper female socialization — probably helps too.

This lack of emphasis on lyrics and hummable melodies can be really frustrating for casual listeners, especially those looking for the one single to latch onto. Electrelane doesn’t really provide it on Axes, requiring that you listen — and feel — the entire album as a total experience. This is a pretty audacious thing to ask a listener to do, particularly when an album can get cut up into mp3 files. It’s also music that doesn’t make for easy participation. There’s no place to shout “words and guitar, I got ‘em!” and thus no easy site of identification either alone with your headphones or with the crowd at the gig. The band doesn’t give many nods of recognition. But I think if you spend time with the album, you’ll find it. Maybe start with “Two for Joy” and work your way through “Gone Darker.” After that, stretch past to the end and let it play to the beginning. That way, you can listen to “Bells” over and over again.

However, I do propose a listening tactic for people struggling to get into this album: play along. If you have a guitar, pile it on top. If you have a flat surface to bang on, tap out a rhythm. And if you have a voice, sing along. Just because the songs are instrumental doesn’t mean they have to remain that way. Remember the feminist possibilities in collaboration and join in.