all photos by Davin Steiger

“I wonder how many people are taking pictures in front of that sign,” a friend wonders aloud, pointing up to the Sinclair’s glowing marquee, towering above a buzzing Cambridge crowd. It’s one thing to drag sleepy fingers across a keyboard at 7am to buy a ticket a few months before a show. It’s one thing to hold it in your hands, running your fingers over printed ink and softly reading the words “Bowery Boston presents…” to yourself in a whispered promise that yes, it’s happening. But rolling up to the gig, dreamy librarian co-workers in tow, seeing the words “The Julie Ruin” suspended in lights above the doorway, tearing yourself away from an “I’m Done” tour t-shirt on the way into the concert hall, taking a deep breath before ducking and dodging and worming through the chattering crowd hoping to catch even a speck of a living legend is a whole world of bizarre. Opener Seth Bogart’s grotesquely beautiful stage decorations aside, the mood of the night was strictly dreamlike; from the front of the stage to the mezzanine, the house was packed full of fans wrestling with the reality of the situation at hand, telling stories about their first experiences with Kathleen Hanna’s music while casting nervous sideways glances at the stage, anxious to miss her entrance. Our fears were hurled to the wayside synthesized new wave fanfare burst from the speakers and the projector gurgled to life, a last gasp of air before a deep dive into the surreal.

True to the sheer magnetism of Kathleen Hanna’s legendary draw, it was clear from the minute that Hunx and His Punx frontman Seth Bogart’s greased out visage took form on the screen that the vast majority of the audience either hadn’t done their homework or didn’t care to. Inflated to gigantic proportions to warn the audience not to touch him during the performance “unless you paid me $100 before the show” among other bizarre requests, his stage show took on a punk rock Pee Wee Herman flair with a dash of 80s game show host. Bogart dashed back and forth between the audience and the backstage, handing out props and assigning roles to the confused, but receptive Sinclair audience. After a short video introducing “Eating Making” with self-explanatory shots of women hungrily downing tubes of lipstick, Bogart wasted no time in declaring one attendee his “Jigglemaster” and ordering her to dance across the stage shaking his prop kiddie pool, featuring a horrifyingly sweet face decked out in heavy eyeliner and bright red lipstick, a role to which she took with unexpected enthusiasm to the delight of the crowd.

      For the most part, the music took a backseat to Hunx’s antics, with the exception of set highlight “Plastic!”, a hard charging new wave anthem that erupted over the audience in a cascade of New Order-like guitar lines. While the auto-tuned vocal delivery was entirely unexpected, Bogart’s performance, full of mesh-shirt machismo confrontation and some of the slickest hip thrusting ever to grace the Sinclair stage, carried the day, turning the crowd into a hot, glossy mess of dancing. Moments like this, featuring simple emotional pleas for identity against the backdrop of mocking commercialism, kept the show from devolving purely into comedy. However, in full honesty, some of us are definitely still mentally grappling with stage banter like “Daddies are becoming extinct” or “You guys are all my grandma tonight”. Thoughts like those stick with you, long after the lipstick’s been eaten.

   After the preceding sensory overload, any entrance would’ve seemed low-key, but The Julie Ruin seemed determined to sneak onto the stage, heads down and eyes never drifting towards the crowd. One at a time, they brushed back the backstage curtain and power walked into position, sounding as few notes as possible to tune up; the picture of professionalism. And then there’s Kathleen. No glamorous entrance for the Punk Singer herself, who stumbles out of the curtain as if she’d been pushed onstage, flailing her arms to maintain balance and smiling an almost comically goofy grin as the crowd howls in excitement. Musicians can often seem like superheroes, matchless geniuses whose command of sound and stage swoop in to rescue us in our darkest moments or connect us with a grander version of ourselves. But from the instant her simple, chipper “Hi!” echoed out from the stage, Kathleen Hanna projected nothing but honesty and humanity in the finest sense. Five foot high stage aside, the performance often felt like a casual discussion, with Hanna openly declaring her distaste for those “idiot asshole motherfuckers in Cleveland” attending the RNC, praising Christina Aguilera (“listening to her sing is like watching someone rewire a car with their toenails”), and pitching an alt online payment alternative called GayPal to loud cheers and laughter. The music, however, reigned supreme, and Hanna’s band tore through their set with stunning precision. Shouts to their drummer, who despite being hidden behind the subwoofer due to unfortunate concert spot choices, kept the pace of these almost krautrock style jams almost feverish, powering the band through any tough spots with steady ferocity. Keyboardist Kenny Mellman added sickeningly squelchy organ, battling back against Kathleen’s yelps and shouts and never afraid to jam out with her.

   While the bassist and guitarist focused on projecting their riffage as written, these two danced back and forth, Mellman pogoing to exhaustion and Hanna can-canning to the groovy surf rhythms her band continued to supply. The moves may not have been smooth, but you never had a doubt that this was their party and they were going to enjoy the living hell out of it. Indeed, when the girl group grooves died down and reality finally seeped back in at the end of their set, you couldn’t help but feel disappointed in yourself for not dancing harder or not singing louder. Hungry, but strangely satisfied, you promised to lose yourself a little better next time.