Kill the Sexplayer + Live

Album review

"This song is so hip right now, I'm going deaf/I wanna kill the singer" -- so go the lyrics of "Kill the Sexplayer," the title track of Girls Against Boys' 1994 Touch and Go EP. A band whose music has frequently been described as "sexy," (with a "cute band alert" having been issued by the teenyboppers at Sassy magazine), it seems likely that the lyrics are meant as a way to take a stab at that musically unimportant image. "Kill the Sexplayer" aside, the EP is made up of live versions of previously released material pulled primarily from what many consider to be the group's strongest effort, 1993's Venus Luxure No.1 Baby. Frankly, this means that the record, as it is somewhat hard to come by, will be of more interest to those who are already fans. The first of the live tracks is "Learned It," with its metallic guitar harmonic feedback and fuzz, and almost mechanized bass grind. Live, Scott McCloud's typically rather sedate, laid-back sing-speak is much more animated and venomous than on tape. Previously available as a studio track as part of an EP of the same name, "Sexy Sam" is played with the kind of intensity that would have allowed it to sit comfortably on the Venus Luxure No.1 Baby album proper. Kill the Sexplayer closer "Let Me Come Back" is the noisiest of the live cuts. The barely controlled chaos of the earlier tracks nearly slips out of hand as the song, already a riotous affair in the studio, erupts into a wall of fuzz against which McCloud's quiet rasp of a voice is nearly drowned out completely. Whereas in the studio Girls Against Boys come across as being coolly disenchanted and cynical, live the guys dish out pure, unadulterated aggression. With a Cop Shoot Cop-style double-bass arrangement that is dense and full on tape, it is a testament to Girls Against Boys' talent that the band members can pull it off in a live setting without (for the most part) allowing it to deteriorate into an impenetrable wall of rumbling noise, though they do push it to the absolute limit. "We've got to amuse ourselves somehow."
© Karen E. Graves /TiVo