Sir Mix-a-Lot, one of the great social critics of our time, had this B-side a few years ago called "Cakeboy" where he complained about some suspiciously effeminate lothario who gets all the girls -- "Tossed salad is the hairdo/Cappucino latte his brew/And he's down to do what most girls tell him to/Brotha I'm scared of you." See, "that cakeboy starts to move to the old disco groove/And your girlfriend likes that." Girls Against Boys are cakeboys. They cover "Boogie Wonderland" by Earth, Wind and Fire on a soundtrack coming out later this summer, they wear snappy clothes and use gel in their hair so it falls onto their foreheads, and a couple years ago in these pages they claimed that falsetto vocals and keyboards help them explore their "homosexual side."
My friend Laura (who thinks drummer Alexis Fleisig and bassist/keyboardist Johnny Temple are the cutest since they seem the most like regular guys) says Scott McCloud's singing sounds like hot breaths at the back of your neck, right at the moment when you know all hell's about to break loose. My friend Molly (whom I actually first met ata GVSB second-stage Lollapalooza set in Kansas City two summers ago) says the foursome's sexuality comes more from groove, like how the thrusting metal riff in their new Freak*On*Ica's opening track "Park Avenue" juxtaposes with a flaming dancefloor swirl and McCloud's more noir-tinted side project New Wet Kojak in '96, saying she "couldn't take my eyes off of him . . . it was like this little secret, me drinking a rum and Coke and smiling. His red lips kissing the mic." These are the testimonials you should be paying attention to, obviously, not mine.
Plus, seeing how Girls Against Boys are apparently the most lust-activating band for young women on the scene nowadays, do we even want to resort to the boring boy discussion of in-their-new-record-better-than-their-last-one? Well, yeah, we do, beacuse Freak*On*Ica is the best album GVSB have made. Hardly a popular opinion -- most rock critics think the band peaked with their preceding House of GVSB, and indie puritans still opt for the generically grimy 1993 debut Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby, from back before GVSB sullied their integrity by incorporating hooks and climbing into bed with David Geffen. Me, I'm gratified just to hear post-indie artfucks who don't only exist from the waist up. But I still have a hard time convincing myself "guitar rock mixed with dance music" or "guitar rock with sex in it" are overwhelming innovations. And as much as House of GVSB bumped and grinded chunky pelvis-riffs through two competing basslines into mechanical propulsion, the collection was still less a creative breakthrough than just a refinement of the band's mucky earlier indie records, so now their best stuff sounded less like an underproduced grunge band and more like a vaguely electro-enhanced version of the Fall. To my ears, Freak*On*Ica further refines the refinement, so in 1998 they sound like an even-more-electronically-embellished answer to the Fall, except now crossed with Psychedelic Furs (whose punkiest song was called "Fall"!) and with tribalumptious Killing Joke tom-toms pretending to be Trouble Funk underneath.
Freak has more whoosh and loop to its studio effects, more shape to its chords. Richard Butler's snarl in the Furs basically split the difference between Johnny Rotten and David Bowie, and McCloud sounds just like him now that he's stopped slurring through a dental dam. So more catchphrases jump at you -- "I don't care what's real/I only care what feels." "I'm going automatic," "Hit me with your pop culture" -- silly slogans about how sellintg out is fun, as unprofound-and-proud as a Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt.
Like Ohio's less catchy Afgan Whigs, another droning squad of indie grads obsessed with the supposedly astonishing sexual prowess of black dance music, Girls Against Boys have always acted too cool to be more than merely suggestive; they've never written a song half as explicit as Next's current r&b smash "Too Close," or "Sleep Together" on the new Garbage album. But they have a mood, a mood that knows arrogant jerks get laid, yet that has as much to do with pent-up frustration as with seduction. Given the intended ominousness, it's almost impossible for GVSB to acknowledge how sexy they are without reducing themselves to a caricature.
Regardless, they're still kissing strobe lights, making sure their new song about "disco kill style" is more disco than their one about "disco ball crashing on your head" last time out. "Exorcisto" and "Black Hole" are the funkiet rump-shakers they've done. And the sprinting tempos of "Pleasurized" and "Speedway" and anxious spurt of "Vogue Thing" and "Exile" finally provide the militant forward surge their commando guitars and lunging basslines have long begged for. Producer Nick Launay, whose track record for intense pretense include the Birthday Party, Midnight Oil, and Public Image Ltd., gives the record a tension that somehow merges the boot-boy dockworker sweaty of Chicago's Touch and Go with the butt-boy dance sleaze of Chicago's Wax Trax!, yet without either record label's fear of flying. "Can you do it like a machine, do it better than a machine," McCloud salivates, and his studly buddies definitely give your vibrator a run for its money.