Punk princess Kathleen Hanna admitted in an interview Meredith Graves of Perfect Pussy that Le Tigre, one of her many musical projects, is reuniting to produce a single track that is expected to drop sometime in October. Her exact words were:
“Le Tigre just got back together in the studio–you have the scoop–for a special song that we are going to release hopefully, like, early-to-mid-October.” She continued, “I will not say what it’s about, but it’s been really fun working with them again.”
She made a point of mentioning that they have no intention of permanently reuniting, nor will they be producing a full-length album or touring. You can listen to the whole interview on Sonos Facebook page (the part about Le Tigre is about 15 minutes into the video.
Le Tigre is a chaotic collaborative effort of Hanna, J.D. Samson, and Johanna Fateman. Sadie Benning was of the original members of the band, but left before they had a chance to record a second album in hopes of pursuing a career in film-making. The band was formed in New York back in 1998 with the intent of being a live back-up band for Kathleen Hanna’s noise project The Julie Ruin, but ended up releasing two albums before their eventual demise.
Said demise was the result of many conflicting aspects of the members’ individual lives, most notably Hanna’s battle with Lyme disease and subsequent secondary illnesses which began with her diagnosis in 2005. Such a sudden and extensive silence from a powerfully loud symbol of self-expression raised a lot of questions and concern, but little to no information was released to the public. Finally, her struggle was candidly documented in a film titled “The Punk Singer”, which was directed by Sini Anderson and released in November of 2013. The founder and frontwoman of the revolutionary late-90’s fem-punk band Bikini Kill returned to the scene in late 2012, investing the majority of her focus and energy into her solo noise project The Julie Ruin. She released a newly recorded single titled “Girls Like Us” in December of 2012,which was followed by other singles, albums, and festival performances.
In the time that Le Tigre has been retired, J.D. Samson has been working on a side project called The New England Roses, and has collaborated with Nicklcat and DJ Lambchop.