Scott McCloud of Girls Against Boys wants to get one thing straight right away. The singer/guitarist of the New York quartet said the title of GVSB's sixth album, Freak*on*ica, which landed in stores Tuesday, is not meant as a pot shot at electronica music.
"It's not a dis at all on electronic music," said McCloud, 30, guitarist and vocalist for the foursome. "If anything, it's dissing on the concept of electronica as a term. Anything like that seems silly to me. It's like 'let's package something, we need to package something -- grungewear, electronicawear!' "
But the 12-song Freak*on*ica does find Girls Against Boys poking fun throughout -- with songs such as "Vogue Thing" (RealAudio excerpt), which McCloud says is a playful jab at the world of fashion.
" 'Vogue Thing' is playing with an idea that I've always really been into," McCloud said. "I like to read magazines. I like to see the bylines for the ads; I enjoy totally twisting them around, like Armani and Gucci, and making fun of them a little bit. I'm not anti-fashion. I just think it's amusing to be buying things that are basically an advertisement, like shirts that say Armani on them."
Originally formed in Washington, D.C., in the early '90s by keyboardist Eli Janney and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, the group now comprises McCloud, Janney, bassist Johnny Temple and drummer Alexis Fleisig (who replaced Canty).
Along with changing their drummer and their home base, GVSB have added to their core repertoire of dance music and swaggering rock. While making the new album, they expanded on the sound from their 1996 release, House of GVSB, with the help of producer Nick Launay (Killing Joke, Public Image Limited).
Fleisig, 30, said their approach included soaking in incidental sounds around them and integrating them into the music. "Coming from a background of recording bands like Killing Joke, Birthday Party, he's very much in tune to that sort of thing," Fleisig said. "The accidents, what can happen when you just let things go. We practice right near Times Square, and maybe Johnny's amp picks up some radio interference, so we try to record that and incorporate that into the song, and he was very much pushing that for us."
McCloud said that in addition to allowing the occasional stray noise into the mix, the band juggled its songwriting technique to account for its recent purchase of new equipment.
"We'd always just recorded our stuff onto Walkman cassette players and then we'd listen back to it and try and pick out what the hell is going on," McCloud said. "This time, with our recording advance, we actually got some equipment which is ours, so we had enough stuff to build from the ground up and add things instead of subtract. We'd start out with a very simple rhythmic sample and then put on a drum beat that really fit on it and build from there."
Fleisig said that "Push the Fader" (RealAudio excerpt) is an example of a song recorded in a manner that he likened to the game of telephone -- where each participant passes on the original message, in the process inadvertently creating a new one.
"Scott and I started together playing a beat, Eli played bass on it and came up with a groove based on the drum beat and we recorded that to DAT," said Fleisig. "Johnny did some keyboards, and we layered it like that. You come up with something you like and then you let someone else do something to it."