theBUZZ
Le Tigre announces first international tour in almost two decades, including three Canadian dates
Le Tigre (Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman) will bring their joyous, experimental post-riot grrrl antics and conceptual multimedia performance to stages across the globe this summer for the first time in 18 years, reuniting at a time when we need them the most.
The beloved trio will kick off their North American leg at the John Waters-hosted Mosswood Meltdown Festival, and includes dates in Vancouver (Jul 3), Montreal (July 22), and Toronto (July 21). Tickets go on sale Friday, January 27 at 12pmET. Ticket info below.
Forming in New York City in 1999—when Rudy Giuliani was mayor and regressive hipster irony ruled— the band abandoned traditional punk instrumentation, pairing drum-machine beats and looped 8-bit samples with the simplest, serrated guitar riffs and call-and-response vocals. Though rage had its place in Le Tigre, the band, with celebratory songs such as Hot Topic—a shout-out to queer and feminist artistic inspirations (from David Wojnarowicz and Lorraine O’Grady to Catherine Opie and Vaginal Davis)—was a departure for Kathleen; she was best known as the singer of Bikini Kill, whose fans found feminist catharsis in her scorching vocals. Deceptacon, the lead track of Le Tigre’s debut, was perhaps an aesthetic bridge between that seductive register of rage and her new band’s dancefloor ambitions. It was later conceived of as music “for the party after the protest.”
The members of Le Tigre shared a vision for multimedia performance, touring with a slide projector in their early days with video later becoming a key component of their live show which fans can still look forward to on the upcoming tour. The band’s final show—until their reunion performance for the This Ain’t No Picnic festival at the Rose Bowl in August 2022—was on September 24, 2005, at the Operation Ceasefire concert at Washington Monument in Washington DC, where they joined a coalition of artists calling for an end to the U.S. war in Iraq.
Recently, Kathleen has been touring with Bikini Kill, running Tees 4 Togo (which sells artist-designed T-shirts to fund the non-profit organization Peace Sisters), and writing a book. JD has a full-time teaching position (as Assistant Arts Professor and Area Head of Performance at The Clive Davis Institute at NYU/Tisch), performs with CRICKETS, and tours with the original live score for the film 32 Sounds, directed by Sam Green. Johanna is an author and art critic who writes regularly for the “Goings on About Town” section of the New Yorker and for 4Columns; she is a contributing editor of Artforum.
Le Tigre Tour Dates 5/27: Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer 6/1: Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound Barcelona 2023 6/3: London, UK @ Troxy 6/5: Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall 6/6: Glasgow, Scotland @ Barrowland Ballroom 6/8: Madrid, Spain @ Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 6/9: Porto, Portugal @ Nos Primavera Sound Porto 2023 6/11: Paris, France @ Le Trianon 6/14: Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso 6/16: Berlin, Germany @ Huxleys Neue Welt 6/17: Hamburg, Germany @ Markthalle 7/1: Oakland, CA @ Mosswood Meltdown Festival 7/3: Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom Tickets 7/6: Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre 7/7: Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater 7/9: Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre 7/15: Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed 7/17: Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre 7/18: Millvale, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre 7/19: Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage 7/21: Toronto, ON @ History Tickets 7/22: Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia Tickets 7/24: Boston, MA @ Royale 7/28: Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel |
About the Author
Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.
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