Of all the titles held by Alice Bag, the lead singer of the 1970s punk band the Bags—Chicana icon, trailblazing musician, memoirist, public speaker, mother—one of the most important and least touted is her role as a feminist archivist. Since launching her own website in 2004, she’s used it as a platform to track protests, events, and key figures in the Los Angeles punk scene. This project has led her to champion rising Latinx bands like Downtown Boys and Trap Girl, only some of whom are based in L.A., in the name of creating a more inclusive and representative history of punk—helping to evolve the kinds of communities she dreamed of as a kid. On her second solo album, Blueprint, Bag expands that sentiment by sketching a new route forward from her traditional punk roots and encouraging her collaborators and listeners alike to color it in.
The guest list on Blueprint makes the contours of Bag’s vision clear. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile add high-pitched wails meant to dramatize the plight of working women on “77,” a battle cry for equal pay (as of 2012, American women earned an estimated 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man). A more exciting touch comes from Spanish singer Martin Sorrondeguy of queercore groups Los Crudos and Limp Wrist, Mexican-American musician Lysa Flores, and American-Chilean singer and poet Francisca Valenzuela, all of whom join Bag as backing vocalists throughout the album, giving poppier punk songs like “Turn It Up” an exuberant touch. Bag has said that she re-recorded some of her vocals to match her guests’ energy, suggesting that collaboration and solidarity can yield stronger results, in the recording studio as on the streets.
Instead of rapid-fire punk percussion or aggressive guitars, this album largely revels in upbeat rock and ambling ballads. “Adrift,” the slowest song on the record, uses a piano waltz to play into Bag’s story about a broken relationship. On “Invisible,” she sings instead of shouting, each romantic croon about disappearing from sight accented by plucked violin and deep cello. She sounds comfortable refuting the angry feminist trope, even when that means using ska-like trumpet and saxophone on “Stranger” or “Blueprint” to get her point across. Bag knows punk is about spirit more than sound, and she hides nuggets of wisdom throughout to remind listeners of those responsibilities: “In this life you’ve gotta amplify/What you want multiplied,” “She won’t need to check her compact/’Cause her actions are her mirror,” “Having enough is a state of mind.” Her respected-elder status saves the lyrical lessons from sounding like cheeky preschool lessons (though “Shame Game” veers close with its finger-wagging chorus). Challenging punk stereotypes isn’t new territory for Bag—she invented the genre “punkchera,” a blend of punk and ranchera music, through live performances years ago—and she makes the variety of sounds on Blueprint come across as both flippant and authoritative.
This year marks 40 years since the Bags released “Survive,” their first and only single issued while they were together. It is, essentially, a song about resilience. If Alice Bag was wondering back then whether her Chicana resilience could last, then Blueprint is proof that she’s only grown more powerful. On “Se Cree Joven,” the only song on this album sung entirely in Spanish, she reclaims her age from men who scoff at her. She’s been a crucial force in punk in many ways, and while her 2016 solo debut showed she’s still got lessons worth sharing, it’s the accessible, open-ended, and inclusive music on Blueprint that underlines how essential Alice Bag’s work still is.
