By DCist Contributor Valerie Paschall

By the time Northern State came into existence in 2000, the term “girl power” had become a sort of joke, referring to acts that spent as much time undercutting this “power” of theirs with shameless self-promotion and dubious costume choices as they did with cultivating any actual vocal or lyrical talent. As such, using this term (or any ambiguous feminist term) to describe these three ladies from Brooklyn seems unfair since instead of wasting any time with gender identification, they slowly but surely turned a Rock n Roll Hotel room of folded arms into an all-out dance party. That in itself sounds oddly… powerful.

Northern State’s Julie “Hesta Prynn” Potash, Correne “Spero Whiz Kid” Spero and Robyn “Sprout” Goodmark spent much of last night’s set premiering songs from this upcoming Tuesday’s release, Can I Keep This Pen? The ladies were clearly proud of this, their third album (and first since their break with Columbia), announcing periodically just what tracks The Beastie Boys’ Ad-rock had produced and proudly declaring after the show that no samples had been used on Can I Keep This Pen? They also had advance copies for sale at the merch table, much to the chagrin of Ipecac, but to the delight of their fans, many of whom appeared to be new converts.

Opener Jenny Owen Youngs shared Northern State’s irreverent attitude and it saved her otherwise hit-or-miss set. When Youngs first took the stage, her folky acoustic guitar sound had enough of Erin McKeown’s swing to make her exciting and her woeful breakout tune “Fuck Was I” was wonderfully heartbreaking. After that, however, she plateaued into a comfort zone of mid-tempo folk almost-yawners and might have completely lost the audience’s interest if it weren’t for her deadpan biting witticisms between songs. After finishing with a cover of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” she assured that even if the audience didn’t like her music, that they certainly liked her.

When Spero, Sprout and Hesta Prynn took the stage at 10:30pm, maybe three or four hardcore fans bounced along to their brassy, irreverent suburban hip-hop. However, as they introduced more and more tracks, such as the Western-inspired “Cowboy Man,” the punchy “Sucka Mofo” and the slick “Things I’ll Do,” suddenly the awkward dancing had reached the second row. Then it reached the third… and then the fourth. By the time they closed out their set, three-quarters of the venue had started waving their hands in the air and start seriously thinking of going to that Tegan & Sara show in November, for which Northern State announced that they will be opening.

Their set wasn’t faultless. Can I Keep This Pen? track “Away, Away” obliged what the ladies referred to as their “Destiny’s Child moment,” a moment that would’ve been better left off of the set. Although it proved that Northern State was not a one note, their inability to keep their voices on key with Katie Cassidy’s guitar chords was noticeable. However, their spunk and their talent overrode such missteps as “Away, Away” for a thoroughly enjoyable set.

Photo from the band's MySpace page