Girls Against Boys

For Girls Against Boys, it’s like time is just helping them keep their essence, to preserve their legend....
Girls Against Boys : Live

Girls Against Boys : Live

My personal preference in music is always the live experience.  You can really see if a band is really good, if they really mean what they say or do, and also if time passes by relentlessly for them.  If so, bands slow down, change tones to adequate the music to the vocal chords of the singer (as with Siouxsie or Dylan) or try arrangements in an attempt to improve an already good number.

Scott McCloudBut for some others, like Girls Against Boys, it’s like time is just helping them keep their essence, to preserve their legend.  Yes, they haven’t released a single reference in a decade (at least) and haven’t played for years, immersed as they have been in other projects, but they’re together again and in splendid shape, as they proved in Amsterdam’s Bitterzoet on Friday, May 3rd, one of the cosiest places in the city of pirates.

With Eli Janney back on bass and keyboard duties, it really seemed time didn’t pass for any of the tracks they played.  Classics like “Cash machine”, “In Like Flynn” “Go Be Delighted”, “Superfire” or “Rockets Are Red” sounded as blunt and magnificent as before or even better thanks to their newfound vitality onstage.  Alexis Fleisig and Johnny Temple are still one of the best rhythm sections in the whole of the hardcore history, while Scott McCloud and Janney still play like they have to fight what they can’t see.

It didn’t matter McCloud changed the set twice, that the stage was probably too small for that amount of energy, that they still are the same, that their sound may still be of a time that is long gone but it’s still effective, still tense and brooding and sparkling and angry and intoxicating.  And strangely, in the world of music, when the normal (and most of the times best) thing a band can do is to evolve and change, it’s good to see some chaps still playing to their strengths, simply focusing on the pleasure of playing and keeping freshness without dissecting things too much.

The encores started with the aforementioned “Rockets”, instead of the initial plan of starting with Clerk’s “Sex Player”, which they duly played right after.  And the final surprise was the unexpected inclusion of their cover of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control” as a final statement of their comeback.  And one couldn’t avoid thinking of Wovenhand (QRO live review) and their recent cover of “Heart and Soul”, a proof about how life goes in circles, no matter where you are or what you do.

How GVSB ended up being the support band of Interpol when the latter barely had a record out and had to repeat songs to make an encore, I will never know.

After the gig, Scott McCloud confirmed that a 5-song EP would be released next fall.  Brace yourselves!

Girls Against Boys

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Concert Reviews
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