Customer Reviews

Cruise Yourself

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Is everybody tucked in? Now that's what I like to see.." That's a bizarre opening line for an album that's hardly bedtime material. Five tracks into this raw, incendiary groovefest, I'm thinking that "is everybody wearing protective clothing?" might have been a more appropriate opener.

Let's get one thing straight: Girls Against Boys are my all-time favourite band, and while I can find some merit in even their most tepid offerings, this is in my view their finest hour. Like any classic album, though, it begins with a curve-ball; "Tucked-In"(sic) is a curious track. A highly repetitive, somewhat inane fuzz-bass plays throughout most of the song, underpinning dark, bass-heavy chord changes and Scott McCloud's droning mantras about "New York, Chicago, Chicago". It raised an eyebrow at first, but trust me on this one - once you get it, it stays with you.

"Cruise Your New Baby Fly Self" then kicks everything into orbit and sets the scene for the album's two killer singles "Kill The Sexplayer" and "(I) Don't Got A Place"; if you can't shake your booty to Alexis Fleisig's powerhouse drumming on these tracks, please seek medical advice. "Psychic Know-How", built almost entirely on bass, drums and - ahem - distorted vibraphone, takes our little excursion on a brief left turn before "Explicitly Yours" lands it into languid guitars and their deepest, most sensual twin-bass groove ever. In fact, one of the strengths of this record is Eli Janney's approach to his instrument. While much is made of GVSB having two bass players, Janney more often switches between keyboards and utilizing his bass as a distorted, high-pitched "lead" instrument. On much of this album, though, he plays BASS - locking in with more conventional, full-time bassist Johnny Temple, whose heavy, bare-boned bass sound already tilts at the Richter scale as it is. On "My Martini", Temple cuts into the groove with almost surgical precision, while Janney relinquishes his bass in favour of surf-styled organ riffing. Scott McCloud's guitar lurks menacingly in the background throughout the album, occasionally busting out a lead riff for climactic effect, but he's more often content enough to provide his trademark charismatic ranting without stealing too much instrumental glory from his bandmates.

After ten songs of McCloud's mesmerisingly aloof, arrogant and cynical homages to all manner of dark, twisted tempation, you get to thinking that this guy must crash pretty hard. That's precisely what makes the closing track "Glazed Eye" so compelling; his entire vocal contribution is to scream and howl in the distance amid Janney's repeated caution that "you're swinging too high". Gloomy vibraphone and Temple's dark, melancholy bass line combine for genuinely chilling effect, as well as giving a sense that maybe you have to read a hell of a lot between the lines of the lyric pages.

While Venus Lux and House Of GVSB are often more widely mooted as classic Girls Against Boys albums, Cruise Yourself rocks my boat because, like no other album before or since, you can move your feet and your hips while your soul soaks up the sleaze. Go, listen, be converted - just don't hold me responsible for any depravity that may result, OK?

This album is a masterpiece in the Rock history, there's nothing else to say!

Half of this record is some of the absolute best stuff this band or any other of recenty memory has ever done. "Kill the Sexplayer"," "Tucked-In", "Cruise Your New Baby Fly Self": all of them first-rate. The other half isn't quite up to the same standard: the songwriting is uninspired and the playing sounds like the guys aren't completely into it. In fact, I've read an interview with Johnny Temple, I think it was, who said exactly the same thing. But, again, the half that's great is SO great it raises the level of the whole thing way up. And any Girls Against Boys record is always worth the trip.

A good starting place for prospective fans, and perhaps still their best album. Cruise Yourself features GVSB's classic brand of indie rock, with a groove a mile deep. Learn it, love it, live it.

Seeing any group live, unless it is a prefab show, is a whole different experience than hearing an album. But that went double in 1995 when I saw Girls Against Boys in 1996 when they were supporting House of Gvsb.

Maybe because with Girls Against Boys, it is as much about power, nuance, and the almost unheard as it is about the music: and that it NOT a slgiht! If you ever saw them on stage, it was the bass, the stomp, the deliberate mud of the growl that made this band so amazing to see live. You could find the music under the noise if you tried, but you never wanted to.


Cruise Yourself, like any album, will not bring you into the mosh pit, but will at least give you a few home movies of Girls Against Boys in action.

Most of the songs here are amazing to hear, and are also pretty simple: grinding circular blues riffs that, toned down, would not be out of place on a 1970s hard rock album by ZZ Top or Mountain.

But if you're hearing this, if you're listening for it, you are missing the whole point. These riffs, the whole sound, the whole nuance, of Cruise Yourself is cloudy, frightening, calculated in its distortion. You are not supposed to hear, you are not supposed to listen, you are assigned to be enveloped, enveloped in this music as static, music as noise, music as blinking off air TV transfixing.

Cruise Yourself. Loose Yourself.

This album is a masterpiece in the Rock history, there's nothing else to say!

"Tucked In" starts things out with a slinky, menacing, insidious groove and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the record. While some songs are better than others ("Raindrop" being my personal favorite), Cruise Yourself is an extremely solid collection of utterly infectious rock 'n roll. Essential.