Kat Bjelland stands, legs apart, guitar slung low, eyes rolling, her blood-curdling voice cutting through a series of curt, uncompromising riffs. Beneath her a moshpit roils, at least half of it female. Behind Bjelland, Lori Barbero coaxes fat, rolling thunderheads from her drum kit. To the left is Maureen Herman, looking noticeably more sleek than her Babes in Toyland bandmates, her bass lines linking the end-of-days wallop to the feral outpouring (she replaced Michelle Leon in 1992).
Babes in Toyland’s 1989 single Dust Cake Boy, tonight’s one-song encore, tells a tale of ardour, disgust, jealousy and mutual incomprehension – “from my dumb mouth to your deaf ear” goes one line – that still sounds as raw 25 years later as it did when the band first arrived, toting amps full of sludgy dissonance, an attic-load of Victoriana, the ripped lace of Bjelland’s dresses and the hollow-eyed dolls of their videos.
Before Bjelland persuaded her to take up the drums, Barbero had never thwacked a tom, and tonight, on the UK leg of the band’s reunion tour, her magnificently untutored, instinctive rolls still echo (but never ape) predecessors such as the Slits or No Wave pioneers UT, lending Babes in Toyland a signature of throbbing relentlessness. Always the most down-to-earth Babe, Barbero takes sentimental before-and-after shots of the crowd on her digital camera; when a cymbal comes loose, she dons a pair of reading glasses, hops off her stool and tightens it.
If the mark of a satisfying reunion is the band sounding just like they did in their prime, when John Peel called their 1990 album Spanking Machine his favourite of the year, then the timely resuscitation of this Minneapolis-founded power trio is on point. For the past few years, something of a 90s revival has been under way in indie rock, with grunge a frequent (and somewhat off-the-mark) reference point. It was the curiosity of this new generation of Babes fans, too young to have witnessed the band the first time, that provided the impetus to reform, after Herman’s business associates volunteered to fund some gigs. Initially ignoring phone calls, Bjelland (who followed Babes with her own vehicle, Katastrophy Wife) finally became persuadable, wanting her own teenage son Henry to witness Babes in the flesh.
Bjelland’s voice has not forgiven or forgotten. It remains an instrument of righteous threat, coming, as ever, from a frame that still suggests a mistreated Dickensian orphan set on wreaking her revenge on the present day. Back then, Bjelland’s look – doll-like, sexualised, dragged through a hedge backwards – was one she shared with her erstwhile friend Courtney Love. It became known as kinderwhore (perhaps named by Bjelland herself) and became one of many points of artistic contention between Babes in Toyland and Love’s band Hole. (Hole, for instance, had a song called Burn Black, in which the “from my dumb mouth to your deaf ear” lyric also features.)
Despite signing to a major label for 1992’s Fontanelle, Bjelland (unlike Love) never developed a taste for mainstream approval. Tonight, Sweet 69 remains poised on a cusp of tunefulness beyond which Babes never ventured; the video, in which the band prance around in wigs against a psychedelic backdrop, is a hilarious toe-dip into the waters of image-diversification that never became a full bathe.
So the influence of Babes in Toyland on bands like Sleater-Kinney has been less musical and more spiritual; that three women could make aggressive, uncompromising music together and retain an audience for it. Babes’ other contemporaries L7 have also reformed and are touring soon; Courtney Love, meanwhile, has released an amusingly self-referential single, Miss Narcissist, and is set to tour with Lana Del Rey.
In the intervening years, pop, like the wider culture, now seems to deal better with a variety of female voices, especially if they are comic or retro. But it deals less and less comfortably with female anger and aggression, Babes in Toyland’s most precious asset.
No one is spared in Bjelland’s bonfire, not least other women: “You fucking bitch/ Well I hope your insides rot!” she howls on Bruise Violet, another song that sets the moshpit heaving. “He’s my thing/ I keep on a hook,” she growls on the opening He’s My Thing. “You’re dead meat, motherfucker!” she bellows on Bluebell. The vituperative heavy metal of Handsome and Gretel directs brutal words at some other wanton female.
You could argue that mere venting is not art. But Babes in Toyland went – go – beyond venting, delving deep into the female id, pulling up unsightly, unholy messes, recognising their ugliness, and harnessing the power of that discovery.
