Bitch and Animal

Ani DiFranco once said metaphorically that she has both spots and stripes. Righteous Babe Records' Bitch and Animal literally have both: Bitch sometimes has a row of dots over her right eye; Animal has been known to sport a bright red Mohawk. They sound like a pro-wrestling tag team, but they're more likely to tag-team your sister. "They're the lesbian Beatles," says a source in their camp. In addition to their anti-Bush sentiments and aggressive feminist attitudes, their hilarious and poignant repertoire sees them astutely applying no-longer-fashionable, old-school composition techniques such as narrative, songwriting and wordplay ("Don't do crystal / Don't do boys / Don't do boys who do crystal / Don't do crystal boys"). Backed by their own violin, bongos and bass, the songs vary from hymns to ganja odes to echoing ballads of raw need and rapped cock-rock -- before wrapping it all up, as they did on last year's outstanding Sour Juice and Rhyme, with a long hidden track of Bitch talking like her British mother. After ten years of interpretive dancing and relentlessly clever anti-folk un-pop, they're breaking up the band after this trek, "The Pussy Primary Tour." They're both working on solo records, and Animal wants to direct (seriously). "It's that combustive chemistry," says the B&A source. "They're creative people, you know?" Yeah, we know.