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Freak*On*Ica
Girls Against Boys
(Geffen)
Of related interest: New Wet Kojak, Psychedelic Furs, Woody Allen's "orgasmatron" "Can you do it like a machine?" purrs Scott McCloud on this new Girls Against Boys album and, by golly, I think he means it literally. The GVSB guys have always embraced technology, turning their fashionable backs on indie rock's retro fascinations. But on Freak*On*Ica they practically love it to death; every track is techno-fed to the point of bursting, oozing with sleazy synth-bass burbles that bob and throb like disco for the deviant late '90s. Not that GVSB didn't always sound slutty, but, clutching the new Geffen contract in their sweaty palms, our boys seem hellbound for whoredom. Let's forgive them their lascivious ways for a moment. Even if Freak*On*Ica's lead single, "Park Avenue," might pass for Gravity Kills, and "Psycho-Future" could be new Psychedelic Furs material, no one captures a cruisin' groove like Girls Against Boys. Promiscuous post-punk indie funk for the cybernaut in all of us, this is one fevered, guilty pleasure you'll never live down. If you can take the heat, follow the beat. John Graham Arches and Aisles
The Spinanes
(Sub Pop)
Of related interest: TLC, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo After two impressive albums, Manos and Strand, Rebecca Gates could have made the same Spinanes record again and probably succeeded. Instead, she takes a soul-tinged detour on the new Arches and Aisles. With drummer Scott Plouf's departure after Strand, the freedom doors flew wide open for Gates, who moved to Chicago from Portland and began to collaborate with the Windy City's post-rock crowd. She spent a lot of time in the studio with her newfound friends, calling on Tortoise's John McEntire to add deep gurgling rhythms to Gates' distinctive bass-bottomed guitar lines on "Kid in Candy" and enlisting staccato-voiced Sea and Cake singer Sam Prekop for "Reach v. Speed," a duet of illusory power. Elsewhere, Gates stretches and expands the Spinanes into realms approaching modern R&B, no easy feat for a band once considered indie-rock darlings. The new perspective could have sounded forced or amateurish, but on Arches and Aisles, the move pays off. Alyssa Isenstein Various Artists
Music from the Motion Picture Small Soldiers
(Dreamworks)
Music from the Original Soundtrack Mr. Jealousy
(RCA Victor)
Of related interest: Puff Daddy, Bruce Willis, foreign exchange trips, Galaxie 500 Everyone's bitching about the proliferation of film-related faux-soundtrack albums these days, and with good reason: They suck. But you know what? Real soundtracks can be even more abysmal, like the new Small Soldiers disc, which features a clear sign of the apocalypse: Wyclef Jean hip-hop-izing "Another One Bites the Dust." Not content with this sacrilege, the producers tossed in remixed versions of Billy Squier's "The Stroke," Rush's "Tom Sawyer" and Cheap Trick's "Surrender," inadvertently inventing a new genre: the horror album. It's not so much that I'm forgetting to mention "War"--the hyped Bone Thugs-n-Harmony/Henry Rollins collaboration--as it is I'm trying to forget having heard it. Thank god, or more appropriately, grace à dieu, for the Euroantithesis to Small Soldiers, the album featuring music from the indie film Mr. Jealousy. Director Noah Baumbach persuaded Luna to score his movie, and the Dean Wareham-led band punches in with a respectable, Velvety take on Lennon's "Jealous Guy" and a new, reverb-drenched pop dreamscape, "Hello Little One." Also decorating this tantalizing multiculti music menu are Italian crooner Paolo Conte, who sounds like a better-disposed Tom Waits on the jaunty "Via Con Me"; the justly revered Françoise Hardy, whose 1966 pop hit "Je Ne Suis Là Pour Personne" stands out; and Georges Delerue, whose cinematic accompaniment to Truffaut's Jules et Jim is here reprised. The only broken spoke in this otherwise smooth-ridin' mix is Harry Chapin's terribly dated-sounding and overemotional "Cat's in the Cradle," but at least it's not remixed or overlaid with Wyclef's drowsy raps. Richard Martin |
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