Pussy Riot emerged in Moscow in 2011, a year in which the riot grrrl movement and third wave feminism were transitioning into the fourth wave’s digitally focused discourse across the Western world. That year, while cities like Toronto, London, and New York held SlutWalks to reclaim the misogynistic slur and raise awareness about sexual violence, members of the Russian collective began protesting with punk songs. Pussy Riot climbed atop subway cars and took the stage next to a prison, screaming against upcoming parliamentary elections and advocating for incarcerated activists. These displays succeeded in starting conversations, talk being a tenet of early 2010s pop feminism. Both the SlutWalks and the guerilla performances reached varying levels of virality, though it’s questionable what they delivered beyond internet chatter. In a 2012 interview, Pussy Riot compared themselves to Bikini Kill. “What we have in common is impudence, politically loaded lyrics, the importance of feminist discourse and a non-standard female image,” they said. “Discourse” is the operative word here.
The limits of this kind of discourse, and contemporary feminist music more broadly, are apparent on MATRIARCHY NOW, Pussy Riot’s new mixtape. It arrives a decade after founding members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in prison for performing in protest against the Russian Orthodox church’s support for Vladimir Putin. The mixtape doesn’t address the anniversary, aside from a line about turning “batons into tampons” and “prisons into clubs.” MATRIARCHY NOW doesn’t appear to address much of anything. It’s not just that the mixtape is a tepid act of defiance, it’s also a tepid pop album.
MATRIARCHY NOW feels about five years late. Songs bounce from sex positivity and equality to outdated feminine stereotypes and boss bitchery—topics the internet has drained of all their vitality. The mixtape is hyperpop-lite, with soft glitches and a giant eggplant emoji on the album cover. The release follows in the vein of last year’s Rage Remixes, in which the band recruited electronic artists like Boys Noize and HANA and shifted from punk to dance pop. The mixtape is a similar effort, a maneuver to make their message more accessible, but also a clear branding strategy.
The project begins with “Princess Charming,” a gender-flipped, fairy-tale subversion that includes a corny girlboss mantra: “Everything I start goes straight to IPO/Everywhere I go I become the CEO.” Lead single “Plastic” paints the perfect woman as a submissive doll over bumping bass and Auto-Tuned whispers, more Die Antwoord than riot grrrl. “Sugar Mommy” swirls around a wicked carnivalesque melody, dominatrix musings, and a Bernie Sanders name check. It’s not until “Hatefuck,” the penultimate track, that the mixtape starts to develop some depth. Deep bass and dubstep skitter and crash under erotic death threats: “Kinda would rather fuck your dad/Shove my panties in his mouth.” The emotional vacancy of the previous songs only further highlight this outburst of fury.
Tove Lo, the Swedish pop star and the mixtape’s executive producer, reveals herself as a curator who loves to, above all, play it safe. Features from left-of-center pop artists like iLoveMakonnen, Big Freedia, and Slayyyter carry the potential to imbue the tracklist with an experimental edge and some much-needed intensity, but instead, they’re juiced for their shticks: Freedia as the twerking cheerleader, Makonnen as the soft-spoken rapper.
Music was always secondary to Pussy Riot’s politics, until it led to coverage in the U.S. media. In 2013, some members even left the group because they found the idea of releasing music antithetical to the anti-capitalist ideals and “war on authoritarianism” that was once at the collective’s core. The new mixtape certainly doesn’t prioritize musical ingenuity, but seems preoccupied with Pussy Riot’s status as activist pop stars. There’s little that sets MATRIARCHY NOW apart from the current market of sex-positive, size-inclusive, pitched-up pop. These once-radical themes are now oversaturated, and the ideas are no longer subversive. When individual power supersedes collective justice, feminism is merely a feel-good anthem. Today’s pop feminism exists under a wide umbrella, from Lana Del Rey’s ultra-feminine vulnerability to Lizzo’s empowerment-themed Top 40 hits; from Charli XCX singing about cheating to Beyoncé sampling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Pussy Riot just huddle up right beside everyone else.
In a recent interview about the mixtape, Tolokonnikova mentioned the importance of “magical thinking” and a “naive approach to life–to be able to fantasize about a better world because it’s something that unlocks your imagination and our collective imagination.” She continued, “Build a world where everyone’s free and there is no prisons, and money just fall from the tree and there is no police and celebrating your own power.” But the mentality of MATRIARCHY NOW doesn’t come across as progressive idealism or even escapism; its vision is blurry and out of touch.
