Duo Puts Fury to Good Use in Humorous Set

It’s easy to get angry about how women, especially gay women, are so often degraded by pop culture. But it takes a special sensibility to turn that fury into something as silly-yet-serious as Brooklyn-based duo Bitch and Animal’s show was Tuesday at Spaceland.

The frank ‘n’ funny pair blended rap, funk, pop, folk and spoken word in a giddy 45-minute performance that celebrated the female body, lesbian sex and pot smoking. Most of this personal-is-political material came from their second album, “Eternally Hard,” co-produced by feminist singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco.

As colorful and animated as two sex-positive Muppets, the musically adept young women were strikingly complementary. Bitch was the tall, wildly ponytailed, classically trained violinist and bassist. Animal, playing djembe and ukulele, was short, Mohawked and bursting with human-beat-box noises.

Though they’re not a novelty act, their goofiness was both charming to the like-minded and nonthreatening enough to intrigue skeptics.

One freewheeling manifesto is aimed at freeing the popular slang word for vagina from its association with the pejorative and make it a positive term. Some numbers were purely fun romps, while others struck more somber emotional notes.

Animal’s rap on the travails of a well-equipped lesbian playa was not only decidedly gender-bent but also a brilliant sendup of hip-hop’s sexual braggadocio.