September 8, 2004

Labeling Le Tigre

“Our band has grown in a very—I hate to use the word – ‘natural’ way. It started as a small project…and as we grew, we had to make decisions as we were presented with opportunities and choices,” assess Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre. “We never had a planning meeting…we have just taken things as they come.”

The story of Le Tigre has oft been a story of labels: feminist, indie, angry, punk, radical, queer, electronic…ad nauseam. But their newest label is quite different than any of those: Universal. As in, Universal Records. Their newest album This Island will be released on Oct. 19 through one of the largest music labels in the world—which is not exactly the first thing one would think of for a band like Le Tigre. We recently chatted with the women of Le Tigre about the state of the band in 2004 and its future direction.

“Mr. Lady, our old record label, decided to stop putting out records, so we had to start looking around to decide what we wanted to do next,” says JD Samson. “We did know that the record sounded…a lot poppier than anything we did previously. With each record, or even each song, it’s like ‘Oh this sounds like it wants to be recorded on a four-track.’ And we could tell that a lot of these songs wanted to be more produced, to have more sounds, to have a bigger, richer feeling.”

“And to do that it helps to have a recording advance. Bags and bags of money,” adds a laughing Johanna Fateman. “Not really—they were small bags. We used [the money] in like 45 seconds.”
While for many it may seem like a large departure for a band that espouses such non-mainstream ideologies to be on such a mainstream label, JD says, “We just wrote this record like we would any other record in terms of content. We didn’t think of changing our content because of the label at all.”

“We sort of have a foot in both worlds. We are releasing music independently [the entire back catalogue is being self re-released] but the next record is going to be on a major label,” continues Samson. “We are doing it as sort of a risk, an experiment. We just want to see what happens.”

Holding everything to the DIY ethic became increasingly more problematic as the band continued to grow. They realized that they could use help in their cause, which, as Hanna notes, is the way most everybody must play the game. “Unless you are totally independently wealthy, where you can do things like create your own venues in every city, hire independent marketing channels, create your own magazine, promote your own band, then it's impossible to maintain any notions of ‘ethical purity.’”

“We feel like the art we are making is important enough that sometimes we are willing to make compromises. You have to, or else you are just going to stay home and play parties for your friends, which is a fine decision. But we want to be out in the world.”

This Island will be released on Oct. 19 through Strummer/Universal.
Le Tigre (with bonus tracks), From the Desk of Mr. Lady (enhanced, with videos) and Feminist Sweepstakes (enhanced, with videos) are currently available from Le Tigre Records through Touch ‘N’ Go.

www.letigreworld.com

By Ryan Gillespie