First Look: Kleenex/LiLiPUT Live DVD/CD

Look good, have fun, leave a little mystery: that, they most certainly did, as evidenced on the new archival set, due from KRS next week. Check out the video, below.

By Joe Warminsky

When Kill Rock Stars released Kleenex/LiLiPUT (The Complete Recordings) in 2001, the two-CD set truly was a gift: Until then, the Swiss band's music -- minimalist and womanly, odd but accessible -- was legendary to the Robert Christgaus and Greil Marcuses of the world, but it was virtually inaccessible to average record-shoppin' Americans. You either could hunt down the mega-rare late-'70s/early-'80s vinyl (good luck with that), or you could send $30 to an obscure mail-order label in Switzerland for an earlier version of the compilation CD. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people waited for the Kill Rock Stars release.

A decade later, Kleenex/ LiLiPUT may be less of an enigma -- there are clips on YouTube, natch -- but the oft-changing, mostly female band is just as important: If it once was a riot-grrrl totem, it's now a valuable example of how to be, in the broadest sense, indie as hell. (They were big enough, however, that the tissue company pressured them to change their name in 1980.)  Live Recordings, TV-Clips & Roadmovie, a new self-explanatory DVD/CD combo from KRS, compiles two live shows, six great TV clips (three as Kleenex, three as LiLiPUT), and their 30-minute film, Roadmovie, which documents a 1982 European tour.

The CD's live shows, both remastered, are for die-hards and completists. The 1979 Kleenex show in Biel is scrappy and intimate, and the 1983 LiLiPUT show in Zurich confirms that the group had become an art-punk powerhouse by then. If the goal is a fresh look at things, however, then Roadmovie, is the real selling point here. There are no performances, and the Super 8 footage is typical band-on-the-run fare: rest stops, cigarette breaks, friendly dogs, highway signs, snacks, blurry headlights, tourist traps, people mugging for the camera, and so on. But it has an undeniable timelessness: The editing is snappy; the soundtrack is nothing but the band's songs; and everybody looks eternally cool, as if you could've dropped them comfortably into any watershed indie scene in the nearly 30 intervening years. It's slightly hypnotic.

And there's the lesson for any band with a van, an ever-present Flip camera and a documentary jones: Look good, have fun, leave a little mystery, and let your music do the talking.