Accused of obscenity and sued by police and Tory MPs, Libertine outraged the establishment as part of Crass. Now she’s back – and she hasn’t mellowed with age
‘T
hings haven’t changed,” sighs Eve Libertine as she contemplates her new album. “All those songs are as relevant as they ever were.” The album in question, Live at the Horse Hospital, shows no sign that one of punk’s most anti-establishment figures is mellowing with age. Recorded at one blistering London live show in April 2024, Libertine collaborated with Chilean guitarist Eva Leblanc, reimagining tracks from Libertine’s back catalogue including ones from her time singing with 1970s anarcho-punk pioneers Crass. Produced by Crass founder Penny Rimbaud, it treads a path between performance art, experimental music and earth ritual; with her strident operatic tones, Libertine sounds like a soothsayer foretelling an apocalypse. It’s not an easy listen, but that was never the case with Crass, either.
“We never had much fun, to be honest,” Libertine says. “It was really heavy going at times. We were angry; we were trying to say things in a way that was confrontational and shocking to get a reaction. And we definitely did.”
Speaking on a video call from her living room, Libertine is good humoured, offering up stern opinions then laughing as she says them, like a chuckling assassin. She describes how Rimbaud’s lyrics to the track Rocky Eyes came from the band’s anti-nuclear activism leading her to see wastelands everywhere: “Looking at a tree and seeing it as …” She pauses on each word for emphasis: “A. Dead. Burned. Stump.” Then another sudden laugh.
