GIRLS AGAINST BOYS - VENUS LUXURE

Girls Against Boys were one of the groups for which I wet my pants with anticipation to see when moving to New York (despite their D.C. founding and Chicago Touch and Go lineage, I associated them with NY), and ‘Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby’ was one of those formative albums that taught me how to wet my pants on command.  Yes, I’d been exposed to the group via the Mallrats soundtrack, and in my cool high school musicry, dropped 17.99 on the then-just-released major label debut of ‘Freak*On*Ica’ at… Musicland?  or Camelot then, perhaps? at me local mall.  Never mind that fans derided the album; it was new to me, and part of my springboard into ‘other’ music (and ‘other’ music asshole-ism).  In a way, I guess it’s good I got to that disc first, since I can appreciate it without the looming presence of earlier works.

But: Venus Luxure.  While I’ll maybe say that every GVSB release after Venus has its ups and downs, the band sneaks up on you: they don’t have a poor record in their catalogue.  Even the repetitive and harsh Adult Swim release is worth a spin, and not just as a fan.  Thanks to a lack of approval by a girlfriend who liked Bright Eyes, I would brush of Girls as a lesser-than band.  Years of recovery (weep) have brought me around to recognizing their massiveness and uniqueness.  Even if their sound borrows from different points of sludge and hardcore (and really, what band can fully escape its influences), every release – even ‘Freak’ – is their own.  Venus does capture something pretty pure, though.  It bridges that gap between sex and anger; finds the right groove between organic and swagger.  It even has a song that gives me that stomach tingle, saved for those musical moments where a group hits some kind of raw, honest nerve – ‘Bughouse’ may resolve to a drinking tale, but its relatively fragile delivery that incenses itself into an explosion of Scott McCloud hasps makes me feel that tale like my own, every goddamn time.  It’s a great disc closer because of it.

It’s a great disc all the way through, actually, using sequencing to swing us into various states of head-bob or fervor.  The double-bass attack that was a simple “and ALSO” detail about the group used to grab people’s attentions proves itself as more than a device from the get go – the thick rumbling of ‘In Like Flynn,’ giving way to the fuck-offery of ‘Go Be Delighted’ – there’s no overt showmanship, just thick songs with half-rambled lyrics that describe something you get even if I haven’t sat down to piece out why rockets are red and babies are blue.  And then there are those moments like ‘Satin Down’ that don’t really appear on any other GVSB release – later albums would see them up the funk or sultry, but a couple tracks on ‘Venus’ are just sort of hazy, and have an organic sense of development that the band would simply become too polished as a group to really hit again.

So it’s obvious I love this album.  Frequent producer Ted Niceley is a perfect match, letting the fuzz build up but never sacrificing that core rock background.

The magic on this disc would be repeated frequently throughout their career (and up to the present, as of this writing, with a new EP out), but ‘Venus’ is admittedly that moment where a group straddles the hot spot between lark and career, just open enough to capture something unexpected but with the history and chops of working together to give it a richness.

Track Listings
1    In Like Flynn
2    Go Be Delighted
3    Rockets Are Red
4    Satin Down
5    Let Me Come Back
6    Learned It
7    Get Down
8    Bullet Proof Cupid
9    7 Seas
10    Billy's One Stop
11    Bughouse