Steven Mirkin on December 13th, 2017

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The mood was set before Pussy Riot even took the stage for their sold-out American concert debut at the Lodge Room, a former Masonic hall in Highland Park. Martial drums, played over the PA, gained volume, suddenly stopping, followed by a pastoral voice, which is overwhelmed from ominous bass notes and sirens. As the band is marched onstage covered in white linen bags (shades of Yoko Ono!), the harsh voice of a prison guard screams out orders: “Turn left! Turn right!” And, as the performers shrug off the bags, revealing three young women in their trademark balaclavas, the voice screams “This ain’t no fucking concert!”

It’s an effective bit of stagecraft, but one that points up the dilemma Pussy Riot find themselves in. Our current moment — with politics and sexual harassment and the politics of sexual harassment rising to the top of the conversation — would seem ready for an act like Pussy Riot to lead the charge. But Pussy Riot is a group that made its name for basically not being allowed to play. They were performance artists, provocateurs with guitars; their bona fides won them prison terms.

And none of the shows that made them famous had lasted for more than a few minutes. Can Pussy Riot be as compelling a presence when no one is worried about the cops bursting through the doors? Or without an easy enemy, will their revolt become style? (The video for “Police State,” made with actress Chloe Sevigny, did little to assuage this concern.) Their 40-minute performance Tuesday night showed them to be a blunt, if only sporadically effective, weapon.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, the only one of the three arrested women who remains in the group, is a compelling presence on stage. When her face is revealed — the two singers flanking her remain in wigs and Lone Ranger masks throughout — the crowd cheers. (They’re each wearing one of the T-shirts on sale at the merch table; say what you will about their music or politics, but Pussy Riot has the marketing side down.) Chanting to recorded tracks, they perform all four of the songs they’ve recorded in English, plus two sung in Russian. Not a word of English or Russian is spoken directly to the crowd, and no attempt to made to translate. Even on the Russian songs, it was easy to figure out the message. The U.S. and Russian governments are oppressive, as is the Russian Orthodox Church.

Musically, the sour harmonies and Tolokonnikova’s plaintive vocals on “Good Girls” are reminiscent of ’70s British art-punks the Slits and the Raincoats, but too often, the beat and shouts come off as generic. The posing and simple dance moves were more the point. But they can come off as second-hand; when they were going through a series of various unified arm moves, part of me was really hoping they were miming “YMCA” in Cyrillic.

The politics were, if not tough to decipher, muddled and naive. “It’s good to be goddess who fucks like a man” they bragged early on. But while claims that they’re bitches and repeating the word “vagina” might have them calling for the riot squad in Moscow, it’s old news in Los Angeles. And “Make America Great Again,” their anti-Trump anthem, is a toothless, obvious put-down.

It almost seems that music is almost beside the point for Pussy Riot, or simply another way of getting their message across. Because the voice at the top was correct: This was less a concert than a short piece of political theater.

||| Live: Pussy Riot performs tonight at the Bootleg Theater.

Photos by Andie Mills