"I'd be sitting in the bedroom and be like, 'oh, I must have left the faucet on,'" recalls GVSB bassist/sampler/keyboardist/singer Eli Janney. "And I'd open the door, and as soon as I'd get near the bathroom, the faucet would turn off. It was like, ha, ha, very funny."
It's somehow fitting that a phantom would pick New York-based GVSB to taunt while recording their new album in Minneapolis. Their hybrid of electronica, industrial noise and raunchy rock (due June 2) is more than a little supernatural, and their dark grooves and intense samples are chaotic enough to conjure visitors from another realm.
But sharing the house of GVSB with a spirit did little to deter the band from producing their product -- nor from taking the time to perfect it. "We spent the most time on this record than on anything that we've done," emphasizes Alexis Fleisig, the resident drummer and most vocal member of the group. "This time we had the option to do whatever we wanted, [since] we had a lot more money to record, and it took us a long time to finish."
But the time spent perfecting Freak*on*Ica (more than a year) had more to do with GVSB's work ethic than their newfound fiscal freedom. Since 1992, the band has churned out lo-fi, heavy grooves (they employ two basses) that can transform any club into a carnal pit, dense with sweat and pheromones. For the last couple years, they've been "the band to watch" ("We're trying to make that a five-year plan," says Janney), and since their signing to major-label Geffen Records, they've had more buzz than a weed-whacker. No wonder they felt the need to be perfectionists.
"I think at Geffen you have to struggle a little bit harder to be a part of the musical community," says bassist/keyboardist Johnny Temple. "With Touch and Go [their previous label], we were with the Jesus Lizard, Delta 72, Brainiac and all these other really cool bands, and [we] felt part of the same thing that they were a part of. And then we moved to Geffen, and our labelmates are Lisa Loeb, Counting Crows, Beck, whoever, and there's no uniformity of any kind. In a sense, you have to struggle more to align yourself with the other bands."
Fitting into a mold, however, has never been the GVSB M.O. "Even when alternative rock was really popular, we didn't fit in because all those bands were more melodic and poppy, fundamentally, than we are," explains Temple. "But it doesn't feel like we've missed some boat or something, because wherever you stick us in, we don't fit."
The boat that they did catch, they jocularly refer to as Battleship GVSB. "You know how hard it is to turn a battleship around?" asks Janney. "A looooooong time." The others are quick to complete the metaphor. "One time we had two vans, and I'm sitting in one, in the back, and I look over at the other van, and the other guys are sitting there, like, Why isn't this van moving?" remembers lead vocalist Scott McCloud. "None of us like to drive, so we usually just sit in the back of the van, dutifully waiting for someone to take the driver's seat," says Temple. "And we wonder why everything takes so long for us."