Most bands wring their hands over whether to reunite or not, but for Le Tigre it was easy. The impetus was a festival in Pasadena, Los Angeles, in 2022. “It was three miles from my house,” says frontwoman Kathleen Hanna, laughing. “I was like: ‘I want to do this because I can cruise down the hill and go to the festival and all my friends can come.’” Then they concluded that the rehearsals for the festival – done over video call, and in LA and New York where bandmates Johanna Fateman and JD Samson live – shouldn’t be wasted. They announced a full tour, their first since 2005, which hits the UK in June.
Returning now, with Hanna free from the Lyme disease that severely limited her life for more than eight years, feels cathartic. “Getting back together to perform these songs is a bit of resolution for us artistically,” says Fateman. “We were either under too much pressure from promoting an album or we didn’t totally get to realise our vision, so we’re able to scale it up almost 20 years later, which is a crazy opportunity – who wouldn’t take that?”
