Review: Riot-grrl pioneers Bikini Kill returned to Philly for the first time in three decades at Franklin Music Hall

Before Bikini Kill began the two-song encore that capped off the band’s blistering set at Franklin Music Hall on Friday, Kathleen Hanna spoke to the crowd about the satisfaction of regrouping with bandmates after years spent apart.

“It’s so great when you get to do something that you really love to do again,” the riot-grrl originator and feminist heroine told the sold-out crowd. “And to do it better than you did it before.”

Hanna, who earlier in the evening referred to herself as a “54-year-old punk,” wasn’t specifically referring to the return to Philadelphia of the band that features bassist Kathi Wilcox, drummer Tobi Vail, and touring guitarist Sara Landeau for the first time in nearly three decades.

During Friday’s wickedly paced, rapturously received 75-minute show before a multigenerational audience, Vail, in one of her turns singing while Wilcox took over on drums and Hanna played bass in true egalitarian punk rock fashion, did cite one of Bikini Kill’s two 1994 Philly shows as being particularly memorable.

That was an all-ages evening on the rooftop of a garage at Drexel University at which, she recalled, the band sold four boxes of T-shirts sporting the group’s wiener dog logo. “Ever since, whenever I’ve seen anyone wearing that shirt,” she said, “they’ve been from Philadelphia.” (A fresh supply of wiener merch was available at the Franklin, with $30 tees and $45 sweatshirts.)

From their formation in Olympia, Wash., in 1990 until they split seven years later, Bikini Kill was a culture-shifting force, a band that never found a mass audience like grunge contemporaries Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Hole, but whose influence rippled widely, like a vintage T-shirt handed down from one generation seeking its own voices to the next.

“Revolution Girl Style Now!” was the battle cry that Hanna cited on the band’s first cassette-only release. That call to action was repeated at the Franklin on Friday in “Double Dare Ya,” the first encore song, which issued a call to self-empowerment to self-doubters. “Hey, girlfriend, I got a proposition that goes something like this,” she sang. “Dare ya to do what you want, dare ya to be who you will.”

Hanna is a fabulous front woman, expert at creating a sense of community in chatty between-song conversations with the audience about self-care, sharing hopeful “recipes for the future” and the deleterious effect of heteronormative pornography. “We have to act on our desires,” she said before busting out her not-smooth dance moves on “Sugar.” “Then we can have something to live for.”

Bikini Kill’s music is tough, aggressive and often confrontational as it sticks a finger in the eye of the patriarchy and shouts out “Suck My Left One!” That song, Hanna explained, inspired her then-15-year-old younger sister’s response to grown men’s catcalls while waiting for the school bus. On Friday, it was an amusingly cathartic rallying cry, a highlight of the show that grew more powerful as it progressed, and a screechy early sound mix found its balance.

BK delights in putting entitled bros in their place, while the music rumbles in taut songs that brandish punky muscle with echoes of surf rock and girl group balladry. “Don’t need you to say we’re good, don’t need you to tell us we suck,” Hanna taunted misogynists. “Does it scare you that we don’t need you?”

Along with anticipating the “Girl Power” pop culture moment the Spice Girls turned into a global phenomenon, Hanna and her bandmates popularized the “girls to the front” imperative at punk and all-ages shows, creating safe spaces for women to move freely in the pit and crowd surf without fearing for their lives.

At the Franklin, that configuration was largely in effect, as the area in front of the stage was mainly filled by female fans, many born after Bikini Kill broke up in the 1990s, while older couples and OG punks hung toward the back of the full house.

Fans were finally able to witness the band of historical importance come vividly back to life after a long separation over years in which Hanna released solo music as well as albums with her politically pointed electro-dance band Le Tigre and indie project the Julie Ruin.

That wait for Bikini Kill to finally make it to Philadelphia was extended till now after a show originally scheduled for April 2020 was postponed multiple times due to the pandemic, and then again in 2022 when Hanna came down with COVID. But fans won’t have to wait long to see Hanna again. The reunited Le Tigre, who haven’t performed together since 2005, kick off their reunion tour in Philadelphia at Union Transfer on May 27.