will le tigre ever tour again

Le Tigre Roar Back for First Tour in 18 Years

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

Le Tigre will return to the road for their first tour in 18 years.

The electro-punk trio will play a lone show in Philadelphia on May 27 before heading over to Europe and the U.K. The North American leg of the tour will officially begin July 1 with a set at the Mosswood Meltdown Festival (hosted by filmmaker John Waters) in Oakland, California. Le Tigre will criss-cross North America the rest of the month, wrapping up July 28 at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn.

Tickets for all new shows will go on sale this Friday, Jan. 27, at 12 p.m. ET. Full info is available on Le Tigre’s website .

Support for the tour includes Shamir, Morgan and the Organ Donors, Claud, Big Joanie, Man on Man, Chicks on Speed, Pom Pom Squad, Dream Wife, Problem Patterns, Who is She?, Erin Markey, Cumgirl8, Morgan Bassichis.

For the next 17 years, the members of Le Tigre largely focused on other projects, only reuniting in 2016 for a song, “I’m With Her,” in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. In August 2022, they finally reunited on stage at the This Ain’t No Picnic festival . 

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* with Shamir ** with Dream Wife *** with Problem Patterns **** with Big Joanie ***** with Chicks on Speed ****** with Who Is She? ******* Morgan and the Organ Donors ******** Claud ********* Man on Man ********** Erin Markey *********** Cumgirl8 ************ Pom Pom Squad ************* Morgan Bassichis

This story was updated on 4/7 at 12:25pm ET to reflect the supporting artists on the tour.

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Le Tigre Announce First Tour in Nearly 20 Years

By Matthew Ismael Ruiz

Le Tigre have announced their first North American tour dates since 2005. The shows take place in the spring and summer. Check out the full list of dates below.

Le Tigre last album was 2004’s This Island . They released the pro–Hillary Clinton single “ I’m With Her ” in 2016. Last year, they performed at This Ain’t No Picnic and confidentially settled a lawsuit from a songwriter who claimed their hit “Deceptacon” infringed upon his copyright.

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05-27 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer 06-01 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Sound Barcelona 06-03 London, England - Troxy 06-05 Manchester, England - Albert Hall 06-06 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowland Ballroom 06-08 Madrid, Spain - Primavera Sound Madrid 06-09 Porto, Portugal - Nos Primavera Sound Porto 06-11 Paris, France - Le Trianon 06-14 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso 06-16 Berlin, Germany - Huxleys Neue Welt 06-17 Hamburg, Germany - Markthalle 07-01 Oakland, CA - Mosswood Meltdown Festival 07-03 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom 07-06 Seattle, WA - Paramount Theatre 07-07 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater 07-09 Los Angeles, CA - The Greek Theatre 07-15 Chicago, IL - The Salt Shed 07-17 Cleveland, OH - Agora Theatre 07-18 Millvale, PA - Mr. Smalls Theatre 07-19 Baltimore, MD - Baltimore Soundstage 07-21 Toronto, Ontario - History 07-22 Montreal, Québec - L’Olympia 07-24 Boston, MA - Royale 07-28 New York, NY - Brooklyn Steel

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By Madison Bloom

By Jazz Monroe

By Nina Corcoran

By Matthew Strauss

• Consequence

Le Tigre Announce First Tour in 18 Years

The Kathleen Hanna-led band will play shows in North America and Europe

The recently-reunited Le Tigre are hitting the road in 2023. The dance-punk band composed of Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman have today announced their first run of tour dates in 18 years.

Le Tigre will kick things off in Philadelphia on May 27th before trekking across Europe in June, including appearances at  Primavera Sound in both Portugal and Spain. Upon their return to North America, they’ll kick off the West Coast leg in Oakland on July 3rd, hitting cities including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Boston before the big finale at Brooklyn Steel on July 28th.

Tickets for Le Tigre’s 2023 tour go on sale this Friday, January 27th at 12:00 p.m. ET via Ticketmaster .

Le Tigre officially reunited last August at Pasadena’s inaugural This Ain’t No Picnic Festival. Before you catch them on tour, read why we think their 1999 self-titled is one of the 10 riot grrrl albums every music fan should own .

Le Tigre 2023 Tour Dates: 05/27 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer 06/01 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound Barcelona 06/03 – London, UK @ Troxy 06/05 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall 06/06 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland Ballroom 06/08 – Madrid, ES @ Primavera Sound Madrid 06/09 – Porto, PT @ Nos Primavera Sound Porto 06/11 – Paris, FR @ Le Trianon 06/14 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso 06/16 – Berlin, DE @ Huxleys Neue Welt 06/17 – Hamburg, DE @ Markthalle 07/01 – Oakland, CA @ Mosswood Meltdown Festival 07/03 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom 07/06 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre 07/07 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater 07/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre 07/15 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed 07/17 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre 07/18 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre 07/19 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage 07/21 – Toronto, ON @ History 07/22 – Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia 07/24 – Boston, MA @ Royale 07/28 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel

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Band in the USA: Le Tigre announce first North American tour in 18 years

Who took the bomp? Oh, we’re gonna find the fuck out.

Le Tigre , the wildly influential New York City trio of Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman, have announced a 2023 North American tour. It marks the band’s first in 18 years, and they’re bringing the slide projector and multimedia experience with them. Le Tigre kick off the 13-date North American leg of their summer tour at the John Waters-hosted Mosswood Meltdown Festival in Oakland on July 1, wrapping the run July 28 at Brooklyn Steel.

The second-to-late date on the tour is a July 24 appearance at Royale in Boston, with tickets to all shows going on sale this Friday (January 27) at noon Eastern. Go ahead and dust off “Deceptacon” and “TKO” from those old indie dance party playlists, and prepare to take the bomp from the bompalompalomp and the ram from the ramalamadingdong. How are we? Fine, thank you.

Peep all the dates below.

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Music Features

Le tigre's feminist rage has always been fun.

Hazel Cills

Marissa Lorusso

JD Samson, Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman recently reformed as Le Tigre for a European and North American tour. Monica Simoes/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

JD Samson, Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman recently reformed as Le Tigre for a European and North American tour.

When Bikini Kill reunited in 2017, later embarking on a tour that united feminist punks across generations , it introduced a clawing, almost desperate question in the back of my brain: Would Le Tigre ever reunite ?

The art punk, electronic, "whatever-you-wanna-call-it" group, fronted by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna alongside Johanna Fateman and JD Samson, last toured in 2005, promoting its only major label album, This Island. But even with just three records to the band's name, released between 1999 and 2004, Le Tigre's legacy loomed large in my mind. The group's combination of new wave-biting synth-pop and mixture of high-brow politics and low-brow aesthetics never lost its power in the decades since the music's release — even as the political targets of its songs left office, even as feminism became a fashionable (albeit often questionably defined position) in pop culture.

In the years since, Hanna, Samson and Fateman have jumped around different musical and artistic projects, from new groups including MEN and The Julie Ruin to writing projects and professorships. But from the newfound virality of a song like "Deceptacon" on TikTok, to the resurgence of riot grrrl principles and sounds in indie rock over the last decade, a reunion seemed increasingly inevitable. When the group announced earlier in 2023 it'd be reuniting for a tour, with three sold-out nights in Brooklyn, I knew that my colleague Marissa Lorusso and I would be reporting for duty. — Hazel Cills

Hazel Cills: I've been a fan of Le Tigre for most of my adult life, but every time I've put on their music I've known that I was missing out on something: The band as they're truly meant to be heard, live with a crowd to actually dance and scream about the possibilities of my MetroCard with. All bands transform and shapeshift to different degrees on-stage, but Le Tigre has always felt like a band whose explicitly feminist music — which often has this singalong, manifesto quality — demands a communal experience. The beauty of Le Tigre was that it built out the punk ethos Hanna had been doing in a group like Bikini Kill (who we've also both seen, as dutiful riot grrrl disciples, not to speak for you, Marissa) with an '80s electro-pop style; not so much burying or disguising potent political messages in pop, but knowing the two can (should!) co-exist, and that the messages are no less radical when you marry them with playful synthesizers and humor and moments of fun .

Which is why I loved, loved, loved the karaoke-ness of the live show. Le Tigre's setup was sparse — just Hanna, Johanna Fateman and JD Samson trading off instruments depending on the song, decked out in color-blocked outfits. But a giant video-screen behind them playing a series of colorful home videos and mini-art films always had the lyrics of whatever given song was being performed across the screen like a news ticker. It had this beautiful effect on me, as if its presence was screaming, "How dare you not sing with us? Look at how easy we've made it for you!" And easy it was, not that I ever, you know, need assistance telling people to get off the internet and into the streets. All of which is to say, the show exceeded my expectations, and I'm still a little awestruck that I got to see them live after 20 years of not touring. What did the live show do for you, Marissa? In the year of listening to this band did you ever feel generational FOMO for not seeing Le Tigre?

Marissa Lorusso : Hazel, let me start by saying it was such a delight to see Le Tigre alongside you! I, too, never figured I'd get to see Le Tigre live and always felt that, as you said, it's a band that "demands a communal experience." I don't exactly remember the first time I ever heard "Deceptacon," but I know I was in high school, and I remember immediately showing it to other girls in my life. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, and even though I didn't understand everything Kathleen Hanna was singing — and even though I didn't yet identify as a feminist — I knew there was something powerful in it that the boys wouldn't quite understand.

American Anthem

Fascination, friendship and desire: kathleen hanna on the reign of 'rebel girl'.

I love what you've said about the karaoke-style setup of the tour. I think the projection of the lyrics did exactly what you described: It welcomed the whole crowd into the party and made it impossible not to sing along, whether you came there as a Gen Xer who saw the band before it signed (controversially!) to a major label back in the day, a longtime millennial fan like us or a Zoomer who knows the hits from TikTok. (And yes, when I saw the original riot grrrl show up on my "For You" page doing a makeup tutorial , I did a serious double take.) But crucially, I think the setup also doubled down on the other essential aspect of the Le Tigre equation: It put the band's political messages front and center. You couldn't not have a good time, as you said, but you also couldn't ignore the larger-than-life text calling out, for example, gerrymandering, hate crimes and the private insurance industry (and that was just in one song ).

Kathleen Hanna performs at Union Transfer in Philadelphia with Le Tigre. Monica Simoes/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Several times during the set, a member of the band would introduce a song by pointing out that its lyrics felt just as relevant today — if not more relevant — as when they were originally written. Much to the chagrin of the denizens of Barbieland, we haven't exactly solved gender inequality since Le Tigre last toured. But what has changed, I think, is the relationship between feminism and pop culture (and pop music). Is it fair to say Le Tigre was putting out records into a world where having one of the biggest pop stars in the world give a major performance in front of the word FEMINIST was unimaginable? Now, it feels almost like a given that some version of feminism can coexist with choreographed dance moves. Still, to me, Le Tigre's approach and lyrics didn't feel dated or out-of-step or, god forbid, cringe in concert. Is that just my nostalgia speaking? How did the tone of the band's messages strike you in 2023?

Cills: I think I was admittedly nervous, too, about how that once Bush-era political spirit would feel in real time, resurfaced in 2023. Maybe it had to do with the band's 2016 song, "I'm With Her," which they wrote in support of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the content of which had a blatant expiration date. Or maybe it's just how I've changed as a person since discovering Le Tigre, like you, at a very formative young age. I found the group as a tween: Maybe it was reading too many music blogs, or too much time on gURL.com, but "Deceptacon" made its way into my orbit. And I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that discovering that first album completely expanded not just my music tastes, but specifically my conceptions of what political music could sound like. My early brushes with music that could express political possibility or rage were the punk my parents listened to, but it was all men — Gang of Four, The Minutemen, etc. Without Le Tigre I wouldn't have found Bikini Kill, wouldn't have found riot grrrl, wouldn't have begun to stack the building blocks of feminism in my brain until they solidified into the outlook I have today.

But all the messaging felt right (not cringe!) in this moment. I mean, "Get Off the Internet," is, I imagine, even more of an anthem in an increasingly competitive attention economy and toothless feminist blogosphere than it was when it came out in 2001. (Although, side note: Can people be "off" or "on" the internet anymore when the internet is in your pocket? The only solution is to throw your phone into the sea, I think.) Every song had an intense response, but I feel like "Viz" stood out to me as creating some special alchemy in the crowd. (I think I remember Johanna complimenting our especially "good jumpers.") And, of course, it did, because I can think of very, very few songs that express what that song is communicating about sexuality and visibility and gender non-conformity in a way that feels subversive and subtle and funny. I'm always looking, I think, in feminist art, for a spectrum of expression that actually speaks to the totality of what marginalized experience looks like, feels like. It's why the band can get away with the fatigue and anger of songs like "F.Y.R." and "Seconds," and then turn around and do a song like "Eau d'Bedroom Dancing" or "Hot Topic," a pure celebration of feminist art that somehow turns what could be a college syllabus into an addictive call and response.

Revolution Girl Style, 20 Years Later

NPR Music's 20|20

On her influential debut, peaches seized her pain and pleasure.

But it's the fun of Le Tigre's show, and its synth-pop sound, that stuck with me. I was also thinking about how there's been such a subtle revival or even nostalgia in the last year or so for that early aughts, "bloghouse" sound among a few rising bands. You have groups like The Dare, The Hellp, Frost Children, all of whom sound like they were plucked from that moment, like I could have found them on one of the few days someone made me read Hipster Runoff as a teenager against my will. But a lot of that era that's being mined for revival is not the queer, feminist, fun electroclash I grew up listening to, like Peaches , Chicks on Speed or Gravy Train!!! (the latter of which I clocked playing over the venue speakers before Le Tigre went on). Instead we get songs like " Girls ," which sounds like it was written by a horny LCD Soundsystem cover band. "Bloghouse" was fun, but mostly fun for who , exactly? Maybe there's a near-future or alternate history where what Le Tigre was doing in the late '90s, early '00s repeats itself.

Le Tigre demands "a communal experience," says NPR's Hazel Cills. Monica Simoes/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Lorusso: Fun for who, indeed. Your question makes me think about a recent interview with Johanna and JD about the reunion tour , where Johanna gave her thoughts about "indie sleaze," the newly coined nomenclature for the early '00s moment that's being revived. She said it makes her think of American Apparel, which makes her think of "sexual abuse"; that it makes her think of Vice magazine, and the nascent alt-right, and a "culture of casual sadism." It's all associated, for her, with "that era and those disgusting people that we avoided, who hated us also," she says. "I mean, it's not like we were beloved by those people." As Johanna points out, all of that stuff was happening right alongside the scene Le Tigre was part of. And while I have no idea if that level of toxicity pervades in today's bloghouse revival, I've yet to hear something that centers an explicitly, subversively feminist perspective from this new group of artists.

So I'm inspired by your proposal of a near-future alternate history where new bands pick up the mantle of artists like Le Tigre or Peaches — music that injects some more righteous rage into this nostalgic sound. It's funny; you and I talked at length after the concert about why the huge feminist pop spectacle of a Le Tigre show felt more invigorating for us than the huge feminist pop spectacle of the Barbie movie, and I think it's for exactly the reason you've pinpointed: that the band makes room for these gnarlier emotions, that it's more interested in the totality of our shared experience than a tidy narrative arc. As you pointed out to me, the Barbie movie never really depicts the actual oppression women face in the real world; that would be way too much of a bummer for a blockbuster aiming to speak to the widest possible audience.

But Le Tigre went there, goes there — and still finds things worth dancing to. So my vision for our alternate-history near future goes there, too. These dream artists would, I think, have to take into account the massive shifts in feminist discourse over the past two decades — the way intersectional issues like misogynoir and anti-trans violence have been centered in more and more mainstream conversations, for example. Plus, the fact that feminism isn't a dirty word, for the moment; so many mainstream stars — some of the biggest artists in the world! — actively embrace the label, even if their engagement with it can often feel watered-down (remember Taylor Swift's #squad?) or contradictory . (And it's not as if genres like indie rock and hip-hop are hurting for amazing women and queer artists, either!)

OK, so all that's a tall order for our alternate history. And it's hard not to feel a little jaded about the prospect of it even happening; sometimes, it really feels like gender equality becomes a hot topic for a minute, turns into a marketing ploy — brands love International Women's Day! Spotify wants to quantify your gender bias ! — and then cycles back into being uncool. Maybe that, too, is why seeing Le Tigre felt so refreshing: Since the band came up at a time when everyone wasn't exactly on board with the whole feminism thing, it's able to create this genuinely fun and genuinely committed space that's blissfully unbothered by what's in vogue. It honored our rage at state violence, our exhaustion with the discourse cycles, our hope for the future and put us, if even just for a few hours, in a community of people who wanted to do karaoke together through it all.

Le Tigre's first tour in 18 years is championing feminism and challenging ageism

‘i need the younger generation to call me on my sh-t,’ says frontwoman kathleen hanna.

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In an interview from a few years ago, Kathleen Hanna called her band Le Tigre "the dance party after the protest."

Hanna, who's also known from her bands Bikini Kill and The Julie Ruin, formed Le Tigre nearly 25 years ago with her bandmates Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning. In 2000, Benning left Le Tigre and was replaced by JD Samson who's remained ever since.

Now, the band is back on tour for the first time in 18 years — and once again, they're using their infectious dance music to speak out about issues that matter to them.

In an interview with Q guest host Talia Schlanger , which has been edited for length and clarity, Hanna and Samson talk about resurrecting Le Tigre and why the objective of their latest tour is to bring together people of all ages and communities.

Talia: JD, what's it been like for you to be back on stage with Le Tigre?

JD: It's been so beautiful and invigorating, I guess, not just because of the fans, but also I think the relationship between the three of us has grown so much in the past 20 years, and it's fun to be together. Somebody mentioned something in a review about watching a band that has as much fun as the audience, and I don't know, that really struck a chord with me. Just thinking about that energy exchange, I think, has been kind of the takeaway for me so far.

Talia: Kathleen, can you take me back to the year that Le Tigre formed? Paint me a picture of how the band began.

Kathleen: I mean, it was really me and Johanna at first just writing the record ourselves in a really disgusting basement. It was actually a sub-basement of a sub-basement. So it's like two floors down, total fire trap, illegal rental, smelled like total fungus. But, you know, we had a 8-track reel to reel and a bunch of old '80s equipment, and we were both really into electronic music.

It was just this really amazing creative time of moving to New York and making the decision to kind of start, for the first time in my life — I had just been looking at so much negativity and negative stuff because my band Bikini Kill had gotten a lot of crap. There's a lot of violence surrounding our shows.

I was able to start looking at all of the positive things that were in my life and the positive things that had happened culturally. And Jo and I kind of became a songwriting team in that basement, and it was a really, really special time.

Talia: Bikini Kill was a massive part of the riot grrrl movement — hugely important, influential. As you mentioned, there was a lot of negativity that you had to deal with. And I think it's really interesting that you turn that into fun music, like you called [what you were doing with Le Tigre] "the dance party after the protest." How did that happen? How did you find the balance between expressing what you needed to express but also making it sound so fun?

Kathleen: Well, I mean, there's tons of bands that have done that before us, and groups like Public Enemy, Style Council, you know, Eddy Grant, Electric Avenue — great example of a song that's talking about poverty and racism wrapped up in this beautiful pop package.

It just really appealed to me because I want to talk about the world around me and how it affects me and my friends and other people. But also, in Bikini Kill, I was kind of sick of the violence. And when you're dancing, it's really hard to punch someone. It's like giving a dog a carrot to carry around in their mouth so that they don't bite anybody.

There were a lot of changes that we made in Le Tigre's live set that, to me, were really, really practical things, like charging more money. Because if you charge more money and you're able to pay yourself and have a decent crew so that you sound better every night, you not only have a better show, but jerky, crusty white dudes don't show up at your show throwing beer cans at your head because they will pay $5 to do that, but they won't pay $18 to do that, you know what I mean? So there are things like that. And also, making dance music just attracts a different audience. It attracts people who are coming to have a good time and not coming there to beat each other up or something.

Talia: It's a functional thing as well as an artistic thing. JD, what do you remember about those early days? I know that you joined a little bit after the first inception of the band, but did you have experience of that sub-basement of a sub-basement?

JD: Yeah, I think that one of my first experiences working with the band was in that sub-basement, and it did smell of fungus, but it was a really beautiful, creative space that gave us a lot of great memories.

I had heard of Le Tigre from some mutual friends, and had met Kathleen, Jo and Sadie actually separately, just from the feminist art community. I was a filmmaker at the time, so I got involved in the projection for the band. And then soon enough, Kathleen and Jo were like, "You're coming on stage!" And ended up rehearsing in that same sub-basement where I was helping them out with projection. So it was a really beautiful time. I felt super grateful to be involved in the next chapter of something that I thought was so revolutionary and important to my community, and the dance party after the protests, you know. It felt like such an important time to be there.

Talia: Le Tigre put out their debut album in 1999. For people who don't remember exactly what was going on, can you say why it was so revolutionary at that time? 

JD:  For me, I was in college and we were really building a queer and feminist community that was about basically focusing on becoming a task force and changing rules and changing laws. We had the death of Matthew Shepard. We were protesting in the streets in the city, and this felt like a perfect way to connect and sweat with each other. 

Talia: Matthew Shepard is the gay man who was killed in a hate crime. Do I have that right?

JD: That's correct. So it just felt really important to be holding space with each other in a way that felt like we could transcend. I think dance music has a particular possibility of a spiritual connection to music and letting go through a journey. And so I think those loops and samples and beats really allowed for a different kind of live music experience and music experience in general, where people were able to lose themselves together and feel safe enough to do so. I think that it was a really important time for that.

Talia: Kathleen, can you remember a moment on stage where you realized exactly what JD is describing, that you were facilitating this collective experience?

Kathleen: One of the times when I realized that we were achieving what we were trying to achieve, was when we played this show that was called [ Last Call with Carson Daly ]. It was like a nighttime music show or something.

We didn't know that people in our community knew we were playing and got tickets and showed up. So when we walked on stage to play, there were all these people — some who were artists and activists that we knew, and just a big group of queer art makers [and] rebel rousers — right in front of us dancing.

I felt so loved and supported in that moment. It made me feel like this is a huge achievement. I don't know, it was just a really big moment for me. It wasn't necessarily like, "Oh, I've done this great thing." It was more like, "People appreciate us and that feels so good."

If you can't feel free dancing in these spaces that are typically created for straight white guy rock bands or whatever — if you can't have five minutes where you can dance and be really goofy and have a good time with your friends, how are you going to expect freedom in the rest of your life?

Talia: Can you compare the moment that you just talked about on the Carson Daly show to what's happening now and who you're seeing turn up at your shows to dance in these spaces that you're creating?

The lyrics feel just as relevant as they did 20 years ago. - JD Samson

JD: Sure. I think [our recent show in Paris] is a great example of seeing an intergenerational crowd of feminists and queers kind of come back to where we left off in the early 2000s. By the second song, we had people crowd surfing. In the balconies, we could see friends of ours, filmmakers, artists, people that are some of our idols dancing. And in the front row there were six year olds who were at their first concert ever.

So I think this juxtaposition of young and old is really taking us back to this realization that this is like a reunion of not just each other and the audience, but a concept of being smart and having fun while doing so. It's really powerful to stand onstage and talk about critique and talk about, you know, not having autonomy over our bodies. And the lyrics feel just as relevant as they did 20 years ago. It's complicated, difficult, sad, depressing, frustrating. But being in that room together with all these people that feel the same way as us and are all fighting the same fight is kind of the beauty of it. 

Talia: I can't imagine how gratifying that is. When you decided to pack up your bags and tour together again, what were you expecting? What were you hoping for?

Kathleen: I didn't really have any expectations except for I wanted to have really cool videos and really cool costumes and play really well. It's kind of up to the people who want to come what it's going to be like. You just don't know until you go out there. So I wasn't really expecting anything.

When the show started selling out, I was expecting people to show up, which was great, but … especially right now, when people are so divided here in the United States — the un-United States — there's so many things dividing us. And one of those things is, you know, generations.

[Generations] were started as a marketing concept to create a group called "the teenagers" that could be marketed to. Now we have all these names like Baby Boomer and Gen X and Gen Z, and part of it is like, yeah, there can be funny stuff about, "Oh, this group of people did this or this." But by separating us into generations, we're not sharing information with each other. And I need the younger generation to call me on my shit. [The younger generation] know the language that is being used now and they can be like, "No, that's not how we talk about that anymore. Here's how we talk about it." And I learn from that, and I feel really, really lucky that so many younger people are doing such great intersectional work.

So what I'm seeing is that they're coming at political and social and cultural issues always from a larger lens. And I think that's really beautiful and really important. There's also things that older generations have learned that we need to pass down — not in a condescending way — but share our histories like, "Hey, you're not alone in experiencing speaking out and then having this horrible backlash against you."

That's been one of the great things, is being like, these people are occupying the same space, people of all different ages are looking at each other with admiration and love. You know what I mean? Like, we like the same thing. We found something we had in common. And I guess I hope that there's a little bit of ageism being challenged in what we're doing. And it is pretty remarkable to be in my 50s and be out on stage again and having a larger audience than we often did back when we first started. We sometimes played to 200 people, and now we're playing to thousands. 

Talia: Maybe can we end by just talking about the value of being in a physical space and sharing music?

JD:  I would say maybe the climax of the show is this medley that starts with the song Get Off the Internet , and it's kind of a re-imagining of the song — new production with robot voices kind of suggesting an AI identity, and the words are "get off the Internet, I'll meet you in the streets."

We leave the stage for this to do a costume change. It's not a song that we ever have done live, but I think it really plays an important part in the show where people just recognize that they are there together. And I think obviously the internet has brought us a lot of community and a lot of great things, and I don't think that there is this black-and-white thinking around the internet and technology in general, but I do think that it is a really special moment in the show to recognize the presence of each other and being at a venue, listening to live music.

Kathleen: We're not even on stage. They can look at the video, but that's the time where people start looking at each other and going, "Wait, what's happening? Where are they? What happened, where'd they go?" And that's by design. 

Talia: Well, I think it's really cool what you're doing. Congratulations on this really cool tour that you're having, and bringing people together like this.

The full interview with Kathleen Hanna and JD Samson of   Le Tigre  is available on  our podcast, Q with Tom Power . Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview  produced by Lise Hosein.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vivian Rashotte is a digital producer, writer and photographer for Q with Tom Power. She's also a visual artist. You can reach her at [email protected].

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Le Tigre Is Going on Tour for the First Time in 18 Years

Leeta Harding

Get ready to ask the eternal question: Who took the Bomp from the Bompalompalomp?

The seminal Riot Grrrl band Le Tigre, made up of Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson , and Johanna Fateman, is reuniting to go on a North American tour for the first time in 18 years. The trio's last studio album was 2004's This Island , and they haven't released new music since the 2016 single " I'm With Her, " supporting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Le Tigre was formed in New York in 1999, the same year they released their self-titled debut featuring their propulsive punk-pop single, " Deceptacon ," which you heard at every basement bar party during the Indie Sleaze era. The trio's final live show together was in September 2005 before they reunited for the This Ain’t No Picnic festival at the Rose Bowl in August 2022.

Le Tigre will kick off the 2023 North American leg of the tour at the Mosswood Meltdown Festival in Oakland, CA, which will be hosted by the "Pope of Trash" himself, John Waters. The band will then hit the road and play other major cities like Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Boston, before ending their tour at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn, NY. The trio will also be playing select shows in Europe before their North American tour.

Tickets go on sale Friday, Jan. 27. For more info and dates head over to Le Tigre's website . Now excuse us while we go listen to " TKO " on repeat.

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Le Tigre announce first tour in 18 years

The riot grrrl group will play across north america and europe this summer..

Le Tigre have announced details of a live tour, their first run of North American dates since 2005. The group, which features Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman, will hit the road in July following a run of shows in Europe. See below for the full schedule. Tickets go on sale this Friday, January 27.

The group will kick off their North American tour at the John Waters-hosted Mosswood Meltdown Festival followed by appearances in Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, Chicago, Boston and more.

Read Next: Kathleen Hanna to publish memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk

Le Tigre last performed in 2022 when the group played This Ain't No Picnic Festival in California. Prior to that date they played two U.K. dates in 2011.

The group released three albums between 1999-2004 and are perhaps best known for their song "Deceptacon." In 2021 Hanna and Fateman settled a lawsuit against singer-songwriter Barry Mann, who claimed that the song infringed the copyright for his 1961 hit “Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp Bomp).”

Le Tigre live dates:

May 27 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer

June 1 - Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Sound Barcelona 2023 June 3 - London, UK - Troxy June 5 - Manchester, UK - Albert Hall June 6 - Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowland Ballroom June 8 - Madrid, Spain - Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 June 9 - Porto, Portugal - Nos Primavera Sound Porto 2023 June 11 - Paris, France - Le Trianon June 14 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso June 16 - Berlin, Germany - Huxleys Neue Welt June 17 - Hamburg, Germany - Markthalle

July 1 - Oakland, CA - Mosswood Meltdown Festival July 3 - Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom July 6 - Seattle, WA - Paramount Theatre July 7 - Portland, OR - Roseland Theater July 9 - Los Angeles, CA - The Greek Theatre July 15 - Chicago, IL - The Salt Shed July 17 - Cleveland, OH - Agora Theatre July 18 - Millvale, PA - Mr. Smalls Theatre July 19 - Baltimore, MD - Baltimore Soundstage July 21 - Toronto, ON - History July 22 - Montreal, QC - L’Olympia July 24 - Boston, MA - Royale July 28 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel

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Don’t Label Le Tigre

By Trish Bendix

The Y2K resurgence is about more than nostalgia for low-rise jeans and body chains; it’s also a return to a mood that Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna once called “the party after the protest.” 

While pop and rap rock were dominating MTV in the early 2000s, a local New York scene was burgeoning with buzzy indie sleaze bands. The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were selling out clubs and signing major label deals. Meanwhile, queer artists like a post-Bikini Kill Hanna were experimenting with a genre that was later deemed electroclash, fusing dance tracks with punk rock and pop elements. While looking for some collaborators for her solo side project, Hanna connected with zine maker Johanna Fateman, artist and filmmaker Sadie Benning, and JD Samson, a recent film school grad who came onboard as a projectionist. Samson joined the band full-time when Benning dropped out and Le Tigre, as herstory recognizes it, was born.

A feminist art electro-pop punk trio whose fusion of politics, multimedia and choreography brought a playfulness to their radical content, Le Tigre was revolutionary in its subversion of music tropes and trends. By pairing colorful matching outfits and choreographed dance moves with songs about white supremacy and feminist theory, Le Tigre poked fun at (and had fun with) what was expected of women on stage, especially as their venues grew larger to accommodate a burgeoning fanbase. 

Though Le Tigre was an extension of the work Hanna and Fateman had already been doing through the riot grrrl heyday in the early ’90s, the end of that decade was fraught with sexual assaults at Woodstock ’99 and the hypsersexualization of women in the industry. Le Tigre's success, despite a lack of mainstream radio play or MTV spins, was in its resistance to the fabricated idea that feminism was dead and that political songs couldn’t move crowds anymore.

While many contemporaneous pop artists were singing about failed heterosexual relationships and cannibalizing what was left of riot grrrl’s third-wave feminism to capitalize on “girl power,” Le Tigre gave audiences the chance to scream along to sarcastic songs like 2001’s “F.Y.R.” : “Yeah, we got all the power getting stabbed in the shower / And we got equal rights on ladies night!”

Many of the political themes in Le Tigre’s corpus are, sadly, extremely relevant two decades later, with racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ+ policies growing more prevalant than ever. In the interim, Hanna has resurrected the iconic riot grrrl phenomenon Bikini Kill, Fateman has brought her queer feminist perspective to the art world, and Samson now teaches a new generation how to make music at the Clive Davis Recording Academy at NYU.

But Le Tigre has been sorely missed by Gen Xers and millennials who haven’t seen the band play live since 2005. Fans freaked out last year when the trio played the This Ain’t No Picnic festival at the Rose Bowl outside of L.A. followed by the announcement of a tour, their first in close to two decades. Pulling outdated hard drives out of storage, hiring a stylist, and reworking their videos (an important component for their stage show) has now given multiple generations the chance to enjoy Le Tigre’s radical joy on its summer tour around Europe and the States.

While on tour, Samson and Fateman spoke with Them about the continued relevance of Le Tigre, the resurgence of indie sleaze, and whether the band will record new music.

Abby Monteil

Jennifer Culp

Ian Kumamoto

When I saw you at This Ain’t No Picnic last summer, you played right before the headliner, LCD Soundsystem. On stage, the singer James Murphy told the crowd that he used to do sound for Le Tigre.

Johanna Fateman : Just to put the James Murphy thing in context, we are from the same sort of New York scene. He did do sound for us and he did an early remix for us of “Deceptacon,” and so we’ve just known him for a long time. But Le Tigre was active and providing music and part of this new electronic punk thing happening before LCD Soundsystem was making records, I believe. DFA [Records] was doing some stuff, but it’s not like we were born out of LCD Soundsystem; they were born out of us.

You said it!

JD Samson : With that being said, we didn’t even know that he said that because we just went backstage and hung out with our families or something. That’s really nice that he said that, and I think we have a good relationship with him and a lot of the other bands that we get grouped with, but I don’t think individually or as a team we really care about being qualified with any sort of headline or group of people. That’s the beauty of this project in a lot of ways: we just are doing what we’re doing and we don’t really need anyone else to tell us if it’s good or bad or if it fits or it doesn’t.

There’s been a real resurgence of “indie sleaze,” a very early 2000s moment that, in a lot of ways, gets positioned as pretty heterosexual and dominated by men, especially in terms of the music. In the documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom , Karen O talks about feeling so alone as a woman in that space, but there were bands like Le Tigre around, so I'm just curious about your relationship to that scene.

JS : First of all, I don’t care about being part of that brand or label and I don’t think any of us do. From a historical perspective, we were friends with feminists and queers and we were part of the art world, and so yes, we were bands at the same time doing a similar kind of thing, but it was in response to a cultural moment and a political moment. So I think that it’s not weird that we had a lot of the same ideas and the textures are similar. Personally, I had straight friends who were part of these bands and I went to see them and was friends with them and hanging out with them. But as a band, we were not going to Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows and hanging out with them. I just did an interview with [the podcast] Indie Sleaze and I said, “Yes, we were a part of making music in the early 2000s and yes, our music sounded — and sounds — the way that it did right then, and I think that that's part of a collective consciousness more than anything.” It wasn't like we got our indie sleaze card to get us into the indie sleaze party or whatever. That's what happens when things become trendy or retro: everyone wants to put everyone into a box.

JF : There’s stuff about that time that was really great that was happening all across genres. But I guess in a way, when I hear “indie sleaze,” I think of American Apparel, and now when I think of American Apparel, I think of sexual abuse. And I also associate it with Vice magazine, which in the early 2000s was essentially like an alt-right magazine. I think we can see in hindsight that that was not like innocent irony. I think we saw it then, too, but I think that kind of culture of casual sadism, where it’s actually cool to use slurs — I associate that with that era and those disgusting people that we avoided, who hated us also. I mean, it’s not like we were beloved by those people.

JS : I think also it had a lot to do with drugs and alcohol. That was just not the identity of Le Tigre ever. We never drank before a show, but we weren’t straight edge or anything. I only drank when I went to indie sleaze parties is what I’m trying to say.

JF : [laughs] I only drank when I was shopping at American Apparel. I would look at a T-shirt and do a line of coke.

I remember the first time that I saw Le Tigre on the cover of Curve magazine in 2004. I was coming out at the time and I thought, “Wow, I can be cool and a dyke!” [laughs] I went back and re-read that interview and found so much of it centered around your decision to sign with a major label for This Island . Reflecting back on that album, do you recall the press focusing largely on the struggle for fans to accept that move? How much was that part of a press narrative? Was your experience different with feminist or gay press versus mainstream press?

JS : We definitely had questions about that because I think people want to place us in an indie space and also want to pinpoint us as a band that’s preaching to the choir, so it’s like, “What does that mean when you open it up to talking to a larger audience?” I think there were some interesting conversations that stemmed from that question within the band and also in press, but we also had so many questions from more mainstream press about our gender and about what feminism is that we hadn’t really had as much before. Overall, the experience of doing press for that record opened up a whole flood of new kinds of questions that seemed a little bit off-base.

JF : Sometimes it’s hard because of the content of our music and stands we’ve taken on certain things. It’s almost like people want us to be political pundits and have the perfect talking points to present about gay marriage or police brutality or abortion rights. We know about all those things and we have feelings about them, but I don’t feel like the most qualified person to speak about that. There are activists doing really high-level policy work and I really wish they had that space to talk about it and not us. 

We also answered questions like, “Why are you on a major label? What made you want to make this change? What was it like working with Ric Ocasek?” Stuff like that. It’s been elusive to actually talk about our art. I think what we really feel like is artists. JD and I worked together yesterday in the studio getting the show together for the tour, and the kinds of things we think about and talk about are so not the public face of the band. Some of that’s intentional, I guess, because you have a persona, but some of it I wish people could know more about, like how we collaborate and how we think about art.

What can you tell me about the process of curating this tour?

JS : We got asked to do the This Ain’t No Picnic show in 2019 with plans to play the festival in 2020, prior to the election, so I think our interest in playing the show stemmed from that relevance. Getting our stuff together for that show was such a crazy process because a lot of the electronics we used on stage are now obsolete, so we had to dig into our hard drives, and the hard drives of other people, and open computers from the 1990s to try to pull stuff off of it and create a piecemeal version of the songs again.

The relevance became super tangible to us during that process, so we got more and more excited to play and say certain things. This new show is really focused on the video content, [which] is always displaying the lyrics, and I think that that became a really important thing for us: even if you’ve never heard our music, you can still understand what we’re talking about, read the words, and I think that that adds a new relevance. So expect that and outfits. Cool outfits.

JF : We’ve been doing this combination of updating certain things. We’re working on this Pointer Sisters cover that we did on the last record and we’re listening to it and it’s kind of an outlier for us. It’s not totally feeling like us. It was an outlier at the time and 17 years later or whatever, it now just feels kind of alien: how do we make this more reflective of not just who we are, but who we were then? 

Some things are really interesting to do exactly the way they were because sitting with it and really being in that double reality moment where you’re like, “What did it mean then? What does it mean now?” Some of it is so powerful to me in ways that I almost didn’t understand when we were doing it; we were too in it to reflect on it. I found that really fun and amazing and rewarding to just be like, “Wow, OK. What were we thinking back then? And who are we?”

Since you've been on hiatus, have you had any moments noticing Le Tigre’s resonance or influence in the world?

JS : I teach at the recording music school at NYU, and so I feel like my students are always grasping for what kind of relevance their professors have. It’s a constant flurry of “You were in that band? Cool!“ So it doesn’t feel as rare I guess for it to come up.

JF : As far as music goes, sometimes people will be like, “You guys were so influential on this or this.” I’m not trying to say we weren’t, but we were part of a group of people, like Wynne [Greenwood] from Tracy + the Plastics and Chicks on Speed, and even M.I.A., who we weren't friends with, but we felt like we were kind of part of this group of women working with electronic music, pushing the bounds of pop and punk and electro. I do hear that in music right now, or I have been hearing that in music. I hear Peaches in a lot of stuff. So I don’t necessarily feel ownership over any of those stylistic things, but we’ve had songs that are big on TikTok and stuff like that. I guess it shocked me that kids would be into “Phanta” of all songs.

Will Le Tigre be writing and recording any new music?

JF : I could see doing something with the songs that we reworked for the tour. I could see doing a release of those as singles or something like that. Or maybe even editing some of the video material we ended up using into something cool. But I do think Le Tigre was time-specific. And I don’t know. I don’t want to do it. I’m not ruling out writing music. I could see that being fun or being the right medium for me to work on something. It’s been fun playing guitar and fun relearning the songs, so I don’t think it’s never going to be be a part of my life again, but I don't think it's going to be my main thing.

JS : Teaching music, I have to be immersed in music all day and I feel like it gives me so much inspiration. So I do still make music. I do remixes and I also have a band, Crickets, and I scored a film called 32 Sounds, [which is] an immersive experience. And honestly, it's just been really fun to make music for making music’s sake, and not trying to go out on tour and play huge festivals — be part of that machine.

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed .

Le Tigre is on tour now through the end of July.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them ’s weekly newsletter here.

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By Naveen Kumar

Photography by James Emmerman

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Photography by James Bee

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Le Tigre Announce First Tour in 18 Years

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

The post Le Tigre Announce First Tour in 18 Years appeared first on Consequence .

The recently-reunited Le Tigre are hitting the road in 2023. The dance-punk band composed of Kathleen Hanna , JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman have today announced their first run of tour dates in 18 years.

Le Tigre will kick things off in Philadelphia on May 27th before trekking across Europe in June, including appearances at  Primavera Sound in both Portugal and Spain. Upon their return to North America, they’ll kick off the West Coast leg in Oakland on July 3rd, hitting cities including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Boston before the big finale at Brooklyn Steel on July 28th.

Tickets for Le Tigre’s 2023 tour go on sale this Friday, January 27th at 12:00 p.m. ET via Ticketmaster .

Le Tigre officially reunited last August at Pasadena’s inaugural This Ain’t No Picnic Festival. Before you catch them on tour, read why we think their 1999 self-titled is one of the 10 riot grrrl albums every music fan should own .

Le Tigre 2023 Tour Dates: 05/27 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer 06/01 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound Barcelona 06/03 – London, UK @ Troxy 06/05 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall 06/06 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland Ballroom 06/08 – Madrid, ES @ Primavera Sound Madrid 06/09 – Porto, PT @ Nos Primavera Sound Porto 06/11 – Paris, FR @ Le Trianon 06/14 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso 06/16 – Berlin, DE @ Huxleys Neue Welt 06/17 – Hamburg, DE @ Markthalle 07/01 – Oakland, CA @ Mosswood Meltdown Festival 07/03 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom 07/06 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre 07/07 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater 07/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre 07/15 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed 07/17 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre 07/18 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre 07/19 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage 07/21 – Toronto, ON @ History 07/22 – Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia 07/24 – Boston, MA @ Royale 07/28 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel

Le Tigre Announce First Tour in 18 Years Abby Jones

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Le Tigre review – fun meets fury in an unmissable feminist pop reunion

Albert Hall, Manchester Longtime musical activist Kathleen Hanna and her inspirational US party band thrill a new generation with a joyous yet fulminating set that takes no prisoners

O n the face of it, rage and joy are not an easy aesthetic fit. Rage is engaged, rope-veined; joy is free and light – frivolous, even. And yet the collected works of musical activist Kathleen Hanna – across three bands: 1990s punk outfit Bikini Kill, her electronic bedroom pop project the Julie Ruin, and Le Tigre , a multimedia collaboration alongside Johanna Fateman (mostly guitar) and JD Samson (mostly synths) – dance along the tightrope between fury and fun.

Now on a reunion tour – they’re in the UK for the first time in 18 years – Le Tigre began as an intersectional feminist pop project in 1998 before folding, three albums later, in 2007. Then as now, they dive headlong into what seem to be contradictions but aren’t, having a mischievous, righteous good time all the while. Hot Topic , a particularly tuneful, finger-snapping anthem, thanks a long call sheet of inspirations for their work.

A bit like improv, this is a band of open-ended “ands” not “buts”. Le Tigre remain punkishly scathing – and partial to bouts of stylised choreography. Although their setup tonight is minimal (guitar, synths, a video backdrop, a few lights), they come equipped with a protest loudhailer and 1960s girl group-style tambourines. For the grand finale, there are props: a broom and a skipping rope. Le Tigre’s music encompasses heated debates – was the director John Cassavetes a genius or a misogynist, asks the succinct What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes? – and their set also features costume changes, plus karaoke-style lyrical displays on a giant screen, because clothes are a form of creativity, and words matter.

It’s hard to explain in 2023, now that genre has become so malleable, exactly how radical it was for uncompromising punk icon Hanna to make the leap into tinny pop music you could dance to; to Le Tigre’s matching costumes and colourful video installations. There was considerable static – especially from the DIY punk congregation. (“Wanna disco? Wanna see me disco?” Hanna fulminates on Deceptacon , one of the band’s most defining songs.)

There are a number of reasons why Le Tigre are back. A big factor in this reunion, and the Bikini Kill respawn that preceded it, is Hanna’s restored health. (For many years, she battled Lyme disease .)

In the meantime, Le Tigre’s work has stealthily connected with another generation. Inevitably, TikTok has played a role. Deceptacon – “Everything you feel/ Is alright, alright, alright, alright, alright,” it goes – has been adopted by a largely female usership in clips that validate their emotions and decisions. Multimedia genre mashups are now, self-evidently, a good thing.

Another contributing factor is that the gains of feminism – and anti-racism, and LGBTQ+ equality – are being rapidly eroded in the US, and the band’s work continues to provide inspiration and succour. It’s a fresh crisis, but really it’s the same old crisis – a feature, not a bug, of the struggle, captured in a Le Tigre track called FYR . “One step forward, five steps back,” hollers Hanna. FYR, meanwhile, stands for “50 years of ridicule”, a coining by the feminist author Shulamith Firestone that identifies how moves towards equality have been met not just with outright aggression, but a backlash of gaslighting, deflection and accusations of absurdity. During the brief costume intermission, a Czech-style cutout monochrome animation depicts burning hills and oilwells, while a recording of Get Off the Internet plays out: “This is repetitive/ But nothing has changed.”

This, then, is a pointed party band who take no prisoners – while pulling goofy faces from time to time. Some of Le Tigre’s songs have dated a little more than others, particularly those expressing hyper-specific political positions. My My Metro Card inveighs against then New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Seconds is a punk-leaning song about hating George W Bush.

Predominantly, though, Le Tigre’s songs are about exasperation: an evergreen state. The The Empty is one of a number of tracks where Le Tigre express scorn for unengaged mediocrity; for art that fails to move. “I went to your concert and I didn’t feel anything,” sneers Hanna, as a drum machine channels her outrage. Later, Fateman, who is now an art critic at the New Yorker , snarls: “I can’t stand yr fake rebellion/ Misdirected and anti-art” on Yr Critique. The band rotate instruments; Samson, who is now a professor , sings Viz , a track celebrating lesbian visibility (“They call it way too rowdy, and I call it finally free”) to especially joyful cheers and a chant of “JD! JD!”

Just as nourishing is the between-song talk. As of old, Hanna ministers to abuse survivors (“You don’t have to raise your hand!”), thanks the Raincoats for showing her that art was not about “being a virtuoso”, and despairs of a burning world. As everyone bawls Deceptacon’s chorus back at the band – “Who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp?” – it feels like a night of communion. Or, as Hanna put it earlier: “A joyous way of dealing with fucked-up shit.”

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One of the most thrilling live music experiences I’ve ever had was when watching Le Tigre, despite it being a set that featured very little in the way of live music at all. The Kathleen Hanna-led trio came on to the stage, and put on a DVD of videos to accompany their songs (they went through the route menu and everything). And then... they jumped and shouted along to it, and it was absolutely incredible. The whole experience had such an air of being a party to end all parties about it that it was difficult to latch on to any of the righteous social and political messages contained in each and every song, but what was clever about it was that the words you were singing to yourself as you exited the gig actually had the potential to be pretty life changing if taken to heart. Very much putting the party in party political, Le Tigre concerts are a raucous, technicolour explosions of sights and sounds that’ll challenge not only what you deem to call “live” music, but maybe one or two deep seated prejudices as well. You’ll likely come out of the entire experience a much better, far sweatier person.

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Le Tigre announce first UK and European tour in 18 years

The shows will precede a run of US headline dates

Le Tigre have announced details of their first UK and European tour dates in nearly two decades.

• READ MORE:  Soundtrack Of My Life – Kathleen Hanna

The Kathleen Hanna -led band, who reunited for their first show in a decade last year , will also tour the United States in 2023, with the European dates beginning at Primavera Sound in Barcelona on June 1.

Before returning to Primavera Sound for the Madrid leg, the band will head to the UK and play gigs in London, Manchester and Glasgow.

The tour will then finish with another festival date at Primavera Sound Porto before gigs in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hamburg.

Tickets for the gigs go on sale here on Friday, January 27. See the full list of dates below.

JUNE 2023 1 – Barcelona, Primavera Sound 3 – London, Troxy 5 – Manchester, Albert Hall 6 – Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom 8 –  Madrid, Primavera Sound 9 – Porto, NOS Primavera Sound 11 – Paris, Le Trianon  14 – Amsterdam, Paradiso 16 – Berlin, Huxleys Neue Welt  17 – Hamburg, Markthalle

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The dance punk group, also featuring Johanna Fateman and JD Samson, reunited for the first time in 11 years last summer at the This Ain’t No Picnic festival in Los Angeles.

Le Tigre started their first gig since 2011 with 1999’s ‘The The Empty’. The 16-song set saw the group also perform ‘Hot Topic’, ‘Phanta’, ‘TKO’ and ‘Deceptacon’.

According to Samson, Le Tigre were asked to reunite for the 2020 edition of This Ain’t No Picnic, before it was cancelled due to  COVID . Speaking to  Spin , Samson said: “We felt that it was really important for us to reunite prior to the 2020 election. We felt the relevance of our music would really stir up something important within our community. And obviously that was cancelled because of COVID. We just continued to want to present the material again.”

“We went in really different directions after we stopped playing shows in 2005. JD has become a professor. I’m an art critic. Kathleen has done various nonprofit work, and then she did the Julie Ruin and then  Bikini Kill  reunited,” Fateman added. “We had more than a decade to just be individuals again, and then come back together, bringing more to the project.”

They will be joined at Primavera Sound 2023 by a huge line-up including headliners Depeche Mode ,  Blur ,  Kendrick Lamar and Rosalía alongside the likes of Halsey ,  FKA twigs ,  Skrillex ,  St. Vincent ,  The Moldy Peaches and Calvin Harris .

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Le Tigre triumphs over time and remains as fun, welcoming and progressive as always

Kathleen Hannah’s electro post-punk project Le Tigre hasn't released a record since 2004 but that matters little to people who are her to see them at a sold-out London’s Troxy.

A diverse audience – young, queer, punk, older, female and gently male too – bridge this gap, and people are as happy to see the band again as if it was the first time.

Hannah – OG Riot Grrrl and Bikini Kill leader – is reunited with Johanna Fateman, and JD Samson, and she isn't hiding the thrill: "I’m fucking nervous, this is the third gig of the tour," she comments as the show kicks off. Hannah has carved out a candid space to talk about her emotions, feminism, gender, and politics in music. Once the nerves subside, the show unfolds in a familiar, intimate, still exciting and progressive atmosphere – it's a testament to safe space in music, and a fun party to be.

Each song is coupled with a confessional interlude; Hannah opens up about her struggles with PTSD and the value of getting help at age 54; why if *NSYNC have choreographs and costumes Le Tigre couldn’t have it too; and, about people who didn’t treat her well and took her out of her path in the past: “Maybe I let them, but it’s also their responsibility to not be assholes in the first place.” Lyrics are colourfully projected behind the band throughout the whole gig, and while it lends a karaoke quality to the night, it also makes it impossible to miss the relevance and strength of Hannah's songs. Le Tigre's themes are as piercing now as they were nearly two decades ago. They play "Hot Topic", and sing ‘Sleater-Kinney’ in the pantheon of names being honoured – and everyone applauds: it’s a subtle and sweet moment.

Inevitably, the whole night is a build up to "Deceptacon". It remains the best song the band ever wrote and arguably also one of the most powerful feminist statements in music. The on-screen lyrics make no difference at that point: anthemic; the song is the apotheosis of everything that has been sung before. Even time hasn't managed to de-politicize Hannah’s rhymes.

The song ends with her jumping up and down, while skipping rope, while we wave goodbye, hoping and singing 'see you later.'

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