L7: Bricks Are Still Heavy (2023)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

DONITA Sparks laughs about being in high demand at the moment. After two cancellations because of COVID restrictions, L7 will be back in Australia in December and it seems that everyone wants a piece of her. We finally get in touch after two rounds of interviews have already been filled and a technical glitch pushes our chat back twenty minutes.

“I’m very happy about (being in high demand) because I’ve been in low demand many, many times in my life,” L7’s singer and guitarist says, and laughs. “It feels good to be IN demand.”

The LA punks were booked back in 2020 and then again the following year but both tours had to be cancelled. As a result, their return to Australia has met with sold out shows and new dates being added to accommodate the fans hungry for L7’s guitar-driven aggression.

“We had to cancel twice, I think, which is really upsetting to us but it had to be done. So we’re feeling the pent up love and energy coming at us from Australia, and we feel the same way, so we can’t wait to get down there and do some rockin’.”

The tour is a celebration of the band’s third album Bricks are Heavy. Dropped at the dawn of the grunge era, it became L7’s breakout release and showed if any proof was necessary that a band of women could rock as hard and assertively and be as strident politically as any of the male acts of the time, while brandishing a level of sardonic humour other more po-faced artists were lacking. While its songs and attitude were reactionary to the zeitgeist of the Reagan/Bush Sr. era in the US, thirty years on, some things remain the same – or worse.

“The first song on Bricks are Heavy is ‘Wargasm’,” Sparks points out. “Wars are still going on. Some of the feminist issues…” She pauses with obvious exasperation. One of the major feminist causes L7 supported during the 1990s was that of abortion rights. The decade-long Rock for Choice concert series the band established featured some of the most prominent alternative rock bands and artists of the time. It helped to galvanise the choice movement and bring together two generations of feminist activism. In June last year, much of that progress was unpicked by the US Supreme Court.

“We started Rock for Choice in 1991, and then to see the Supreme Court overturn abortion rights in a national amendment, that was like ‘Woah! God damn, we are really going back to the Stone Age!’ That was really disappointing,” she says, despondently. “It’s weird. We’re in such a culture war in the United States. We were winning the culture war for a long time. Now it’s like we’re still winning the culture war, but they’re winning the political war. It’s really messed up, and I don’t know if it’s really just growing pains, or death throes, of the Right. I don’t know. It’s pretty creepy.”

Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie has placed itself at the vanguard of the US culture wars right now for its satirical takedowns of consumerism and patriarchal society, topics that have been targets of L7 as well. But Sparks admits she doesn’t “know anything about the Barbie movie.
The art direction looks incredible!”

She does have an opinion about Barbie itself, however.

“The origins of Barbie are actually kinda cool. She was actually the first doll that had work clothes. She was a career girl! I think for years – even though I played with Barbies when I was a kid, I loved Barbies, I thought they were great – but I think that they’ve been a cultural joke for a long time, but in actual truth they are not that way, even though there’s total body weirdness with her body.” In the end though, “It’s a doll!”

With problematic aspects like body issues and the consumerism promoted by the staggering amount of Barbie products and variants that have appeared over the decades, the idea of Barbie as a role model has long been problematic. L7’s strident activism has always positioned them as female role models for far more positive reasons. It’s something that Sparks and the band have embraced and continue to strive to be.

“I think there have been few and far between role models of women in rock and music. They’ve all been…” She pauses for a moment to consider her words. “Not all of them, of course, but the big superstars are like – well, they don’t make them like Nina Simone anymore! It just seems that it’s a requirement for these pop stars to be scantily clad, and that really wasn’t the point back in the day. If you had a good voice… Aretha Franklin was not scantily clad!”

Earlier this year I went to the Opera House with my 18 year old to watch another band of 90s feminist icons, Bikini Kill. When I bring it up with her that, almost as soon as we had left the theatre, my child elevated the show to the level of a religious experience, Donita Sparks is deeply impressed. “That’s fantastic!” she says, and ties it in with her previous point.

“I think when young women – and men – see a band like Bikini Kill or L7, it can be a religious experience. I know rock and roll was a religious experience for me, when I was a kid. I felt like it was connecting with people who got me, and got them. They certainly weren’t on the radio! The Ramones were not on the radio. Iggy was not on the radio. You had to go see them, and get their records and have them communicate to you through the speakers.”

“I wish that we were playing some all ages shows in Australia,” Sparks continues. “We tried to get an all ages show going in Melbourne, and in Sydney, but there are liability issues and insurance issues, and there aren’t a lot of all ages venues, so that’s kind of a bummer. When you’re a teen, that’s when you need rock the most, to help you get through being a teenager. Which is very challenging. It’s important for teens and tweens to see cool bands.”

L7 AUSTRALIAN TOUR

7/12: Metro, Sydney

9/12: The Tivoli, Brisbane

12/12: The Gov, Adelaide

13/12: Rosemount, Perth

15/12: Croxton, Melbourne – SOLD OUT

16/12: Croxton, Melbourne – SOLD OUT

17/12: Croxton, Melbourne – SOLD OUT