Bikini Kill performed together for the first time in 20 years last night (November 4).
The trio of Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox reunited on stage at New York venue The Kitchen, where a launch party for journalist Jenn Pelly’s 33 1/3 book about The Raincoats‘ self-titled album was taking place.
The group performed only one song – ‘For Tammy Rae’ – before The Raincoats themselves took to the stage. You can watch a clip of the performance below, via Pitchfork.
Bikini Kill split up in 1997 after seven years together, during which they released two studio albums – ‘Pussy Whipped‘ and ‘Reject All American‘.
In 2015, the trio reissued their 1991 demo tape ‘Revolution Girl Style Now!‘, including previously unreleased tracks. Speaking to NME at the time about one such song, ‘Ocean Song’, Wilcox said: “Kathleen wrote the lyrics and then music on bass and at this point it wasn’t a collaborative effort at all. There was a very short window when she wrote songs like that and that’s why they sound so different from the short punk songs that we did after.
“It reminds me of learning to play guitar, because I literally had never picked one up before I joined this band. Listening back, it sounds more like the bands that were happening in Seattle at the time, like early Nirvana. She’s singing a dirge, it’s not full Poly Styrene yet.”