Alice Bag fell into punk rock via the same storied route of celebrated outsiders before her: the rejection of societal norms and the embrace of differences. Born Alicia Armendariz in Los Angeles in 1958, Bag’s youth as the child of Mexican immigrants divided her between worlds. At home, she was only allowed to speak Spanish. At school, where she was teased because of her overweight, frizzy-haired appearance, she could only speak English. Bag found solitude in music, soul tunes from her sister, traditional Mexican rancheras, and later, glittery acts like Queen, Elton John, and David Bowie; when she once transferred high schools, she requested classmates to call her “Ziggy.” It took her almost 4o years, but she has finally found a way to unite all these disparate influences in Alice Bag, which is somehow her first solo album despite a storied musical career.
That career began the late 1970s, as the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first punk rock bands to emerge from L.A. After the Bags dissolved in 1981, Bag went on to play in other bands like Castration Squad, The Cambridge Apostles, Cholita! The Female Menudo, and Las Tres. In 2011, she released her first book, the autobiographical Violence Girl, and in 2015 she self-published her second, Pipe Bomb for the Soul. Alice Bag is first formal LP of any of her projects, in addition to being her debut solo record. While Bag wrote all of the songs, she is joined by a variety of L.A. musicians as well as her daughter.
Alice Bag is an amalgamation of stories and sounds from its creator’s life, the latter focusing specifically on feminism, politics, and breaking out of the hive mind. In the early ’00s, Bag moved from L.A. to Arizona and worked as a teacher. There, she met a student whose father was undocumented and one day, he never came back from work. Bag acted as the family’s translator as the attempted to get the man out of a detention center. “Inesperado Adios” tells the tale as a sorrowful Spanish duet between mother and son. “Poisoned Seed” rallies against genetically modified seeds, specifically ones that force farmers to become dependent on Monsanto. “Programmed” confronts societal brainwashing with the declaration “Education be damned we are being programmed!”
Sonically, Alice Bag is as diverse as her aforementioned musical interests. On “He’s So Sorry,” Bag goes full ’60s girl group, complete with “Be My Baby” drum beat, a Shangri-Las spoken-word prologue, and “oooh"-ing harmonies. Considering the Spector sound, it’s only fitting that the song’s subject matter would confront domestic violence. Bag herself grew up witnessing her beloved father abuse her mother, which makes lines like “Just because he’s sorry doesn’t mean he’s gonna change/Just because you love him doesn’t mean you’ve gotta stay” even more impassioned. Later, “Incorporeal Life” is a jazzy tango featuring rumbling drums and slinky vocals. Bag’s songs that serve as a call to arms (regarding consent, self-liberation, and confrontations) tend to (rightfully) be faster while the reflective ones like “Suburban Home” (about a stagnant romance) or “Weigh About You” (about negative influence of a relationship).
An album 40 years in the making has a high probability of being underwhelming—records with less than half that timespan have more than proved that point. But Alice Bag feels like effortless self-expression that simply needed an outlet. Alice Bag promises to introduce its namesake’s work to a new generation of radicals, and luckily, her words are a revolutionary rally cry.
