Rock music from Vienna: Bipolar Feminin and their debut album “A fragile system”

Bipolar Feminin steer confidently through the wide spectrum of catchiness and challenge. Even the band name may be irritating: on the one hand it seems clumsy. Feminism and mental health – as if one had picked out current buzzwords in which the so-called left-green filthy youth can bask.

The music made by the Viennese band is unsurprisingly catchy grunge punk: electric guitars and lots of banging, but with easily digestible choruses. Sometimes it’s reminiscent of ’90s sing-along anthems like Oasis or 4 Non Blondes. Her debut album “A Fragile System” is nevertheless charming and attractive because the poetry of the lyrics is radically authentic and because the complexity of the music is fed by its naivety.

“For us, the band name was also about two poles that rub against each other, but are still one,” explains Leni Ulrich on the phone. With this, the 27-year-old sums up the work of her band quite well: It is the field of friction that interests the four Viennese: not just mere rejection.

And Leni Ulrich rubs herself against a lot: In the song “Attractive Products” she throws up about capitalism, in which people are degraded to mere consumerism; in “Efficient” neoliberal mania for progress is rejected; “Mami” negotiates femininity as an imperative.

The refusal anthem “Am Boden” is particularly impressive: “Welcome to the ground, that means party for you!” promises Ulrich. The desire to sink is celebrated here with bodily excretions: everything should be shitted on and the listeners are invited to poop in the corner. Puke and boogers also occur.

Just start a band

Bipolar Feminin were founded in Vienna in 2019. According to their own statements, it was not a big deal: They knew each other anyway, are friends or even sisters, bassist Max is the brother of singer Leni Ulrich.

Last year the first EP “Piccolo Family” was released, which is a lot rawer than the first album that has just been released, where the songs are worked out more thoroughly. But all this is still arranged around Ulrich’s voice: she screams, she croaks, her singing is like a force of nature, released by the anger in her stomach. “I process my everyday life in my lyrics. They often come out of me in spurts,” she says.

Above all, however, her words are a form of self-empowerment, she regains her personal autonomy by determining how she sings about her environment. This is the ringing antithesis to the fact that, as a woman, she is exposed to permanent evaluation beyond the usual ideals of beauty. But it’s not just about her: she sings about the universal feeling of being left behind and of exclusion.

These are all familiar topics, nothing is new. But it’s presented in such a wonderfully radical and unapologetic way that it’s good to listen, to find yourself again, maybe to sing along.

And while doing that, the realization creeps up on you that the fragile system that Bipolar Feminine talk about only partially refers to the structures of contemporary society. Above all, it is about the fragility of individuals, even small systems that have to exist. The good news: Fragile doesn’t mean broken, especially when you can still scream about it.