Alice Bag

Alice Bag

Sister Dynamite

In The Red

On her new album Sister Dynamite, L.A. punk icon Alice Bag confronts some of the most pervasive problems troubling the world today: unchecked privilege and willful ignorance, systemic inequality and fragile masculinity. Her third solo effort and first release for In The Red Records, the album also offers an unbridled celebration of community and the undeniable power in embracing one’s own truth. In her impassioned push for freedom of all kinds, Bag endlessly transmits a raw and exhilarating energy, ultimately transforming each song into a much-needed antidote to numbness or despair. The follow-up to 2018’s Blueprint—named one of the best albums of the year by NPR Music—Sister Dynamite marks a thrilling return to the full-throttle punk that Bag pioneered with her legendary first-wave punk band, The Bags. With its breakneck velocity and galvanizing melodies, the album’s kinetic sound was partly inspired by Bag’s work in producing the latest record by Chicana punk band Fea. “All their songs are rockers, and it made me want to make an album that’s upbeat all the way through,” she says. To achieve that force-of-nature intensity, Bag teamed up with her core group of musicians, including guitarist Sharif Dumani and bassist David O. Jones. Co-produced by Bag and her longtime collaborator Lysa Flores (who plays rhythm guitar and sings backing vocals on several songs), Sister Dynamite finds Candace P.K. Hansen and Rikki “Styxx” Watson trading off on drums, each lending her distinct musicality to the album’s potent rhythms.  Throughout Sister Dynamite, Bag reveals her incredible...