Pubic Image Ltd. '80s vs '90s, punk vs disco, art vs commerce: Girls Against Boys
Chris Yurkiw

"Right now, what seems to be going on is that things are really pop." says head Girl Against Boy, Scott McCloud. "It's not really about rock, it's about pop. Then you have electronic stuff, and you still have the more angular post-punk stuff, and both of those are kind of underground."

It's my fault for asking McCloud about The State of Rock in 1998. But when you're talking to the leader of a band that crawled out of the cliquey Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scene, only to vault themselves to relevance in the mid-'90s by embracing the artifice of art as commerce, dance music and a longstanding love of early-'80s post-punk groups, you want to know how they did it. Of course, McCloud has no idea. But his generalizations on music today could just as easily apply to GVSB specifically. Spin got it just right in its review of the Girls' Geffen debut, Freak*on*ica, when it said the new album was "simultaneously more metal, more disco and more pop."

Sure, all of those adjectives are slight exaggerations, and sure, the Fall/Mark E. Smith thing came up yet again. But if GVSB come off as a quintessentially contemporary rock band, it's as much for their melding of power chords and keyboards as for the early-'80s connection. (The latest bit of proof that 1998 is 1983? The return of the trench coat -- on everyone from Tricky to the Beasties).  Post-punk it got called: taut guitars, punchy and prominent bass, rock music but often danceable. And if you want names you need only look at the resume of Freak*on*ica producer Nick Launay, who worked with Public Image Ltd., Killing Joke and the Birthday Party back in the day.

"That post-punk kinda sound, that linear/angular music was a turn-on to us because it was a lot less straight that a lot of the punk stuff," says McCloud. "PiL was just so alien sounding, you know, like a driving bass line with total textured guitars and nothing else. It's stuck with us for a long time."

but the post-punk band that Girls Against Boys most resemble is the Psychedelic Furs. McCloud's voice is a ringer for Richard Butler's gravelly growl, and when he writes songs with evocatively carnal titles like "Pleasurized," "Zodiac Love Team" and "Rockets Are Red," it only adds to the Furs' ol' sex-type thing. Sex, the Girls' have, but sax, no. Yeah, GVSB have album titled like Tropic of Scorpio (Dischord, 1992) and Cruise Yourself (Touch And Go, 1994), and each member of the quartet has a jaw almost square enough to be a model's. But get into McCloud's lyrics on Freak*on*ica and you'll find they're as much about money and music as love and lust.

"Kiss my sound system," he implores on "Speedway"; "The love is good if the loop is good" is the pearl passed on in "Cowboy's Orbit." And then there are McCloud's patented slogans, like he's writing lyrics as ad copy. He is. "Disco killstyle/ Punk ass gold power" goes "Exorcisto," and the words evoke the very sound of the band.

But despite Girls Against Boys' disco-punk clash, McCloud believes that "straight" rock will rise again: "I just hope it comes back as something cool and not something that horrifies us all. I mean, who knows? in 2000, the Charlie Daniels Band might be huge and everybody's gonna be like, 'Fuck! This can't be the future!' But maybe it will be, because it'll be like, 'Oh, the future already happened, man.'"