Olympia, WA · riot grrrl · punk

Bratmobile

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Riot grrrl founders, reunited — 'Pottymouth' still snarls, and the sarcastic, minimal punk that helped launch a movement remains gleefully intact.

Bratmobile formed in the early 1990s around Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman and Erin Smith. Wolfe and Neuman met in 1989 as neighbors in dormitories at the University of Oregon, both raised in politically active households, and bonded over punk and hip hop. They began traveling to Olympia, Washington, on weekends and started the feminist zine Girl Germs in 1990, work that fed directly into the band they formed the following year.

The group came together almost by accident. Calvin Johnson, an Olympia musician and co-owner of K Records, booked them for a Valentine's Day 1991 show alongside Bikini Kill even though Wolfe and Neuman barely played instruments, so they performed the set a cappella. With borrowed gear and advice to avoid sounding anything like the Ramones, they wrote five songs and debuted properly as a two-piece at Olympia's North Shore Surf Club, recording for the first Kill Rock Stars compilation the next day.

Their sound stayed deliberately spare: cheap-sounding guitar, snapping drums and Wolfe's flat, sarcastic shout, closer to first-wave punk and girl-group pop than to the heavier alternative rock of the era, and they were central to the riot grrrl movement that grew out of Olympia and Washington, D.C.

Alongside the music, the band was known for its zine work and for the loose network of shows and self-publishing that defined riot grrrl. They broke up mid-decade, reunited around the turn of the 2000s, and have played intermittently since.

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