360°Sound sat down with Selena Chambers to discuss her new 33 1/3 book Fontanelle, exploring Babes in Toyland’s extraordinary 1992 punk record. The Babes were led by Kat Bjelland on vocals and guitar, with Laurie Barbero on drums and a couple different bass players. According to Chambers “they were screaming about the pain and struggle they experienced as women in the patriarchy.” Hugely influential, particularly on the scene that came to be known as “riot grrl,” they are largely forgotten today. The band’s major label debut for Warner Brothers, Fontanelle was created amid personal crisis and the explosion of grunge.
Chambers’ book is part of Bloomsbury Academic’s 33 1/3 series consisting of short books on classic albums. She got her start as a journalist before co-authoring the acclaimed Steampunk Bible in 2011. She also writes fiction, including Calls for Submission (2017), a collection of feminist horror stories. She has been nominated for many awards over the course of her “lo-fi write life.”
This interview has been edited for length & clarity.
360°Sound: Why did you choose Fontanelle for your 33 1/3 book?
Selena Chambers: I discovered Babes in Toyland when I was 12. I think I read about them in Michael Azerrad’s book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. When I finally heard them, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was one of those life-changing artistic moments. I had never seen women be allowed to portray rage, or anger or talk about any of the things that they were talking about at the time. It opened up a different avenue of what the feminine was to me.
When my parents passed away in 2019, I found all my journals, all my songs that I’d written at the time, influenced by Babes in Toyland tapes. I was processing all that when the call for 33 1/3 came out in 2020 during COVID. I had not seen anything remotely retrospective in a deep way about the band. I would see a lot of takes on Hole and Bikini Kill that alluded to Babes in Toyland. No one would ever give them the sort of analysis that I thought that they deserved. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll try it.’
Because it predates Nevermind, there’s a purity to the artistic vision that Babes in Toyland had.
I agree. And that’s why they deserve integration into the discussion about this period. This is a very unique period, maybe one of the last in which artists weren’t tied to an algorithm or tied to data analysis. It was all very organic sounds and forms of expression that we don’t have anymore, and I think it’s very important to preserve. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to Kat for the book because she’s had some very serious health issues.
Revisiting the Babes catalog confirmed for me that what Nirvana did, other bands were also doing at that time. There was an expression of rage and dissatisfaction, anxiety and frustration with the direction of culture. Fontanelle could easily have been Nevermind.
When I first started writing this book, my question was, ‘Why wasn’t Fontanelle the next Nevermind?’ There was a moment when everyone involved thought there was the potential for that. Tim Carr [Warner Bros A&R person] is another voice that’s missing from the book because he passed away in 2013. Carr was operating from gut instinct, I think. His line of work [artist & repertoire development] hadn’t become so data driven yet; it was more about gut, which is what led him to such artistic discoveries, like Beastie Boys and B-52s. They had the opportunities to be the next Nevermind, but things didn’t fall in place like they should have.
Joe Cole’s death really played a huge part in that, don’t you think?
Yeah, I do. It haunted the entire recording. And Michelle [Leon, Babes’ original bass player] being romantically involved with Joe Cole, that was a different wounding for her. [Editor’s note: Cole, a beloved figure in the underground punk scene, was shot to death in a robbery in 1991.] Laurie Barbero’s dad had also died. So there was a lot of powering through life events.
Maureen Herman [Michelle Leon’s replacement on bass] was making her major label debut within a month of joining the band, and no one knew she was coming. It seems like no one told Lee Ranaldo [Fontanelle producer] what was going on. In talking with him, I got the sense that he regrets some things. But you think everything’s set up, and you’re ready to go, and then you’re back to square one.
You present Fontanelle in a feminist perspective that’s really important here. And you discuss the ‘riot grrl’ ethos. Could you define riot grrl for me?
The clinical definition would be, riot grrl was a political movement started in Washington state during the 1990s that performed and celebrated music about feminism, and it was predominantly all-female led. Now, a more modern definition would probably be, any sort of all-female band from the 90s.
How did you approach writing in a feminist context about a band who didn’t consider themselves feminists?
Writing about feminism and Babes in Toyland was sort of difficult because of the past versus present contrast. They weren’t political; they didn’t make overt feminist statements like Bikini Kill did, or even L7 or Hole. But their actions spoke louder than words in that regard. I call it internal resistance. They had no interest in making sure their message was getting across – either it was or it wasn’t. The art is bigger than the artist.
Now, feminism is becoming more fragmented, and people are being put in corners a lot in our current discussions. With Babes in Toyland – something sort of neutral, but still covertly political – it gives you more space to explore what your role is within the dialectic. That was really important for me to try to discuss.
A woman expressing rage and anger is still viewed differently in our culture. The cultural patriarchy celebrates Cobain’s expression of rage and anger, but marginalizes Babes in Toyland and Kat Bjelland’s rage and anger.
Right, and all that kind of stinks. Patriarchy thrives on having us fit into compartments. Masculine is anger, fear, aggression; feminine is nurturing, love, compassion. Women aren’t allowed to go outside of their containers without being condemned as a Lillith or a Medusa or something like that. Whereas, men expressing love and compassion is seen as more of a dimension. And women aren’t allowed to speak up against any of it. It’s a guilting mechanism to keep people in their place.
I recommend everyone read Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. I’m focusing on women, but it includes anyone else who has been othered within patriarchy. The Babes expressed pure rage, in contrast to women performers who might say something a little subversive, but with a cutie-pie smile. This is pure Amazon warrior rage. It’s terrifying. And it really makes people stop and think.
There’s a significant difference between clever, overwrought complaining and what Kat Bjelland was expressing.
And it makes you ask, ‘What are they so angry about?’ With Kurt Cobain it’s like, ‘Yeah man, he’s just angry, you know? Shit sucks. Blah, blah, blah.’ But with women, the reaction is, ‘Why is she so mad? What is she talking about?’ I am seeing women revert back into silence right now during a time when we really need to be screaming.
It’s very important for me to emphasize the power of the scream. I turned the book in the day before the Dobbs ruling. I’m time traveling, going back to the ’90s talking about everything that’s going on in the ’90s. And when I come back here to 2023 it’s the exact same shit. I think the crisis is, we stopped screaming about stuff.
The complexity of it is overwhelming. And I think that contributes to the reaction of silence. With so much information available to us we’re like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’
What do I do? Which goes back to the importance of internal resistance. [Babes in Toyland] lived in a time when they could have been told no at every corner, but they refused that. They refused to have their womanhood block anything that they wanted to do. And again, they didn’t wave flags or talk about it, but at their core, they wouldn’t accept no for an answer. They were going to do what they fuckin’ wanted to do. Don’t sit around and wait for permission from your government to tell you you’re a person. You’ve been a person the whole time.
What would you say are the the key contributions Kat made to where we’ve gotten today? How did she bump the conversation forward?
She gave us a vocabulary of topics that women weren’t allowed to talk about, which is sexual abuse, sexual harassment, assault, child abuse, rape. But also more innocuous things like, questionable female friendship. She gives us all these topics of discussion, and gives us a canvas to look at, to see the raw emotions that it causes – the hurt and the harm. It gives you a catharsis. It doesn’t necessarily normalize it, but if you have any sort of angry feelings as a woman, it makes you feel normal that you have those, and that’s very important.
The entire band gave an example of what women can do – what the endless possibilities are when you just do it. You don’t sit around and wait for permission, you don’t take lessons, you don’t let someone make you feel bad because you don’t know a certain blues scale. You just pick up the instrument and feel, feel the music and learn from there. I think a lot of people stop their creativity because of perfectionism, trying to perfect things. So expression is a very big legacy.
Also, their contribution to the whole Kinderwhore idea, which played with the idea that society doesn’t value older women – they only value young women. That’s a discussion that’s still very important.
Is there an analogue to Babes today? Are there bands that are doing some similar things now?
Yeah. There’s a few bands: Quinn the Brain, Margaritas Podridas. Faetooth are more of a metal drone band, but they have the noise and women-rage component. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s continuing.
Order the book direct from Bloomsbury here
You can find Selena on Twitter and Instagram @BasBleuZombie.
Keep up with her on her web site selenachambers.com
Here, for your continuous-play pleasure, is the entire Fontanelle song sequence, just as A&R guy Tim Carr intended.
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