Bikini Kill – “Ocean Song”
Bikini Kill are reissuing their 1991 debut demo tape Revolution Girl Style Now in a few weeks, and the reissue will include three previously unreleased songs. We’ve already heard one, the grungy “Playground,” and now the band have shared another, “Ocean Song,” along with a new interview on The New York Times’ T Magazine. “To hear this material kind of shows the link that we had to the Northwest and to the music scene there,” Kathleen Hanna says. “I really love that, because I feel like a lot of times, that gets lost. It’s kind of written about like, ‘these freak feminist anomalies who sprung up out of nowhere.’ We actually were friends with people in so-called grunge bands, even though nobody called themselves grunge bands.” Hanna also explains that “Ocean Song” was inspired by her experiences working at SafePlace, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse in Olympia, Washington: “I felt crazy, I felt like I’d been dropped in the middle of the ocean, and I was screaming, ‘Look at all this stuff that’s happening,’ and was just making dolphin noises, nobody could hear me.” Listen below.
Revolution Girl Style Now is out 9/22 on Bikini Kill Records. Pre-order it here.