Review: Girls Against Boys: House of GVSB (Touch & Go)
Rating: Excellent
By Johnny Walker (Blak)

Skittering across the blasted landscape of your bruised and battered fin-de-millenium psyche, this newest release from New York's Girls Against Boys--or GVSB for short--is the perfect soundtrack for the jittery 90s. Not since that other mighty NYC outfit, Cop Shoot Cop--with whom GVSB share a number of stylistic tendencies--roamed the rock world on a search and destroy mission, has a band so connected with the admittedly twisted and fractured mental state of yours truly.

On the current Lollapalostcause tour, GVSB proved their mettle by showing up meatheads like Metallica for the redundant raptors they truly are. GVSB is a band that truly exists in a league of its own, playing a music that is current yet not a part of any "scene." Underused and undervalued rock sources as disparate as Cop Shoot Cop, British amphetamine goths Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, the early Psychedelic Furs, and even The Fall all make their presence felt on House of GVSB, one of the top releases of 1996, a record that revels in ambivalence and mystery, residing in that grey area of life where things like right and wrong are never quite clear, and you're left to your own devices.

The opening track here, "Super-fire," rocks with a sense of imminent doom very much reminiscent of CSC in its twin bass-driven fury, courtesy of Eli Janney and Johnny Temple. Singer/guitarist Scott McCloud meanwhile immediately begins to posit his black-hearted, Zen-like riddles in a detached, almost condesending, voice: "When you got nothing . . .When your ass is in the fire . . . In dust we trust . . . Can you decide?" The next track, "Click Click," turns up the heat even more, swinging along to nihilistic sentiments like "I blow it all on one crazy shot . . .Dreaming it all now, living is easy." Is he talking about gambling? Heroin? Sex? You're never quite sure, but the overall mood beginning to form here is as addictive as those, and you want another hit, quick.

The aforementioned early Psychedelic Furs influence comes into play on the driving "Crash 17 (X-Rated Car)," with McCloud supplying a jagged guitar riff heading straight for the gutter while the band eschewing its usual touches of industrial-strength funk to barrel along in a straight 4/4 thrash. The nihilistic 'tude continues here: "In my eyes it's not the same/ Thru my head it's just a lie . . . I think I'm gonna crash it." This dead-end love affair with the void is mirrored in perhaps the best song on the album (and one of the highlights of their Lolla set), "The Kinda Mzk You Like," with the interplay of the basses taking things to new heights as McCloud outlines the dilemma of the libertine who's seen and done it all twice: "Your head is dead, your body's wasted / There's nothing left to try." Do the zombie shuffle, yeah. Meanwhile,the rocking "Cash Machine" functions as something close to an outright homage to Mark E. Smith and The Fall, with McCloud getting the intonation (as in "Cash Machine-ah") just right.

House of GVSB also includes some effective changes of pace: "Life In Pink," for instance, lopes along in an agreeably sinister fashion that recalls the best moments of those seminal goths The Sisters of Mercy. "Disco Six Six Six" is another off-beat winner, with Janney's shrill, wah-wah keyboard riffing giving the proceedings the feel of what it might be like tripping the light fantastic on Lucifer's dance-floor. "Zodiac Love Team" ends the album on an ambient note, an opiated, sensuous haze replacing the crystal-meth rush of the preceeding "Wilmington." Suffice to say that they just don't make music this alluringly dark anymore. Trent Reznor may rock, but he sure as fuck ain't sexy; GVSB eroticize the 90s death-trip, and suggest that if we're all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well enjoy the ride. And with GVSB recently signed to Geffen records, the ride has only just begun.