ROCK PREVIEW
Vogue Things
Being fashionable and sexy is fine, but Girls Against Boys want people to love them for their music.

BY JOHN GRAHAM
243-2122 EXT. 312

Girls Against Boys, Buffalo Daughter, Distortion Felix
Zoot Suite,
13 NW 13th Ave., 827-4148.
9 pm Saturday, Aug. 1 $10

 

Eli Janney admits he's "incredibly hot." Female indie-rock fans would undoubtedly lick their lips in agreement--the band Janney plays in, Girls Against Boys, has frequently been called the "sexiest band in America"--but he's not referring to his animal magnetism. He's phoning from a sweltering hotel in Houston, and, yes, we're discussing the weather. Eventually we get to the real subject: Girls Against Boys' new album, Freak*On*Ica.

"We got sick of what was being called 'alternative rock,' which at the time was just lousy pop bands with loud guitars," he says, explaining why the New York group opted to take a techno-minded approach. "We started getting into electronic sounds, sort of revisiting a lot of the stuff that had originally influenced us, [like] a lot of the Wax Trax! stuff and early '80s English stuff."

Despite its synthetic vibe, Freak*On*Ica doesn't sound like cheesy New Wave or industrial dance. Alexis Fleisig's hypnotic, rolling drum riffs are obviously a human, not digital, creation, and Scott McCloud's slurred moans would be more at home in a cocktail lounge than a dance club. As always, though, there is a subtle, funky groove throughout, Johnny Temple's bass bumping against Janney's pulsing keyboard. That's what gives GVSB their amorous aura--the lusty low-end battle of the bass. It's better than pornography. You can almost smell the sweat and cigarette breath, the tainted air of Times Square, the black asphalt sticky from the heat.

The fire that drives GVSB first flickered to life a decade ago, when Fleisig, McCloud and Temple played in Soulside, a popular Washington, D.C., emocore outfit; Janney was a friend who manned the mixing boards. In 1988, Janney, McCloud and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty recorded a few fun songs using samplers and guitars. It was never meant to be a permanent band. Then Soulside dissolved, and with Canty back in Fugazi, McCloud and Janney called in Temple and Fleisig. Suddenly the pet project became a real deal.

An EP of their work up to that point (six songs, titled '90s vs. '80s) was succeeded by the 1992 full-length Tropic of Scorpio, an uneven affair of post-punk, electronics and jazzy horns that nevertheless scored GVSB a deal with Chicago's Touch & Go Records. A move to New York and three increasingly successful albums followed: Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby ('93), Cruise Yourself ('94) and House of GVSB ('96).

Fans quickly latched onto the band's sultry rhythms, the press loved their sassy good looks, and GVSB became hot property. Magazines begged them for fashion spreads. Women swooned. Labels wooed. After much internal debate, they signed with Geffen, which offered them a "complete creative control" contract similar to those of Nirvana and Sonic Youth. Indie purists understandably decried the move--it was OK to sound depraved on record, but jumping into bed with Big Business? Good boys don't.

"It wasn't an easy decision because we were happy at Touch & Go," says Janney. "But at that point we had so much interest [from record labels] and we had so much leverage that we could write the contract we wanted. We thought, 'If we ever want to do this in our lives, this is the only opportunity....' We're all very concerned about a lot of the issues about signing with a major label. It was a big discussion. We all have our own opinions about it--the whole corporate consolidation and control of music is not a good thing, and how much do we want to participate in that? We feel we have a way we can get through it and still maintain our sense of self."

If Freak*On*Ica is any indication, GVSB has kept its personality intact. The album is, however, a noticeable stylistic break from the past: The ever-present synths give it a glossier sheen than their rough early works. Overtly commercial sell-out?

No way, Janney insists: "We finished [with House of GVSB] what we felt was kind of the trilogy of Touch & Go records. We definitely wanted to take a musical step and move on from what we were doing. I think moving to a new label was a catalyst of sorts.... There is a certain amount of pressure on this album. We knew it was gonna come under fire from our sort of punk-rock fans. Then there's the label on the other side, wanting an easy sell to radio. You're caught between these two sides; one side wants you to make Venus Luxure No. 2, and the other side wants you to make an Oasis album. Basically it just comes down to you having to shut everything out and say, 'Look, I'm gonna make the album that I wanna fucking make and that excites me. I'm not gonna listen to anyone else because that's stupid.' And that's basically what we did."

 

originally published July 29, 1998