Give Up The Roast is a column that collides delicious caffeine with wild thrashing a la a bi-monthly coffee and punk album pairing—the perfect combination for perking you up during that midday slump. Here, columnist Shannon Shreibak investigates all of the notes, from fruit rinds and spices to perfect fifths smothered in grinding distortion. So come on all you coffee shop novelists, DIY freaks, and connoisseurs of fine taste—keep your mind here in the GUTR and catch a buzz with us.
Like many aspects of my life, the moment when I finally encountered the two foundational components of Give Up The Roast (hardcore and coffee, in case you’re late to the party that is this column) was a late blooming one. I didn’t stumble into the thrash and theory behind punk until I moved to Chicago at the age of 18, but the belatedness of my introduction doesn’t belittle it. If anything, the delay made me even more of an obsessor—striving to cram a lost lifetime of basement shows and zine xeroxing and record ravishing into the past few whirlwind years. As for the coffee part, I hadn’t enjoyed a decent cup until late in my teens, after which my spiral into caffeine dependence began.
And so begins a tale of two crippling obsessions.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN (BACKGROUND)
For feminist women, Bikini Kill is much more than a band. For many, they were a gateway to not just the “radical possibilities of pleasure, babe,” but also the radical possibility that women could be remembered as more than glitterati trophies. Bikini Kill serves as the bridge between the harsh machismo reality of now and the hope for a new era of equality. Bikini Kill’s patriarchy bashing stage banter was a call to arms; its sonically brutal songs were war cries; the band’s mission was revolution. Years after the ideological sucker punch that was my discover of the band, the urgency of Kathleen Hanna’s feminist coup has all but left me.
When it came to matchmaking a coffee with the riotous Olympia quartet, I knew that I had to find a brew as heavy-handed and firmly rooted as BK, but laced with gleams of brightness not unlike Kathleen Hanna’s mawkish drones. Of course, the small Washington town from which the Fab Fem Four emerged held the perfect brew—in Olympia Coffee Roasting Co.’s Sweetheart Espresso.
BRASS TACKS (THE COFFEE)
While there’s nothing sweet and saccharine about Bikini Kill’s militant feminism and uproarious riot grrrl canticles, Olympia Coffee Roasting Co.’s Sweetheart Espresso is the perfect pairing with the gruff quartet. Don’t let the dainty moniker fool you—Sweetheart Espresso yields a cup as steel-toed boot heavy as Bikini Kill’s hardcore-flecked manifestos and musical bludgeons against the patriarchy. With heavy-handed flavor notes like earthy hazelnut, gritty chocolate and lush huckleberries, the Costa Rican (sourced from a family-owned micro mill in a small island town) beans hits a low-end flavor profile without bogging down the palate. The secret to the bean’s success is OCR Co.’s “honey method” of processing. Essentially, the coffee cherry is popped mechanically and leaves an excess of sugary mucilage around the beans, guaranteeing a sweet ‘n heavy cup.
WHITE NOISE (THE MUSIC)
With Kathleen Hanna’s reemergence into the public eye, thanks to her incredibly harrowing documentary and the reunion of her electroclash pop group The Julie Ruin, Bikini Kill’s brief yet monumental catalog has also garnered a brighter spotlight and wider fanbase than ever before. The most pinnacle piece in the group’s three-disc backlog is its debut LP, “Pussy Whipped,” an album that endures as a timeless piece of proto-politico punk thanks to its calculated lyrics, bone-dry wit and merciless rendition.
Scorning of all jockified hardcore tropes, the Fab Fem Four lace hip knocking hooks with marrow-gnawing lyricism, all spewed through Kathleen Hanna’s militant megaphone vocal delivery. Launching with the tongue wagging vitriol of “Blood One” (“Blood is one / Hate is two / My pussy is three”), the album only mounts in unapologetic ferocity. From the brain-melting trilling of “Li’l Red,” to the knuckle-grater grunts punctuating “Sugar,” the quartet proves that it didn’t leave everything on the field with the self-release of “Revolution Girl Style Now!” back in ’91.
Digging into the physicality of bands like X-Ray Spex and The Raincoats, Hanna & Co. perform with unapologetic self-possession, most notably on the caterwaul of the band’s landmark manifesto “Rebel Girl.” The album maintains a blistering pace throughout its 24 minutes, governed by Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox’s crepuscular backline and Billy Karren’s woolen riffs. The album closes with a wave of calm during album closer “For Tammy Rae” as Hanna channels the cherubic lulls of then-Heavens to Betsy frontwoman Corin Tucker.
When Bikini Kill is under discussion, it’s impossible not to fixate on Kathleen Hanna’s magnetism as both a philosophical chancellor and chameleonic stage presence. Onstage, Hanna embodies all of the contradictions that confront the modern woman—stand strong, but stay sweet; posture independent, but with a subservient backbone; act like a queen in the streets, but a hussy between the sheets. In Kathleen Hanna’s “Pussy Whipped” world, those expectations are not only vile—they are her next sonic casualties.
Column by Shannon Shreibak. Go forth and be loud with her on Twitter @ShannonShreibak.
