Girls Against Boys: You Can't Fight What You Can't See : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

So far, the '00s are shaping up as "The Antidote Era." When the major labels sucked up all the good mid-Nineties bands in the post-Nirvana gold rush, they only bestowed hits upon a few of them -- and GvsB, like Jimmy Eat World and Wilco, weren't one of them. But happily, like those bands in the past year, the twelve-year-old Washington, D.C., quartet has emerged in perfect health on the other side. GvsB's sixth album -- and their first since leaving giant Geffen Records for tiny Jade Tree -- has a rhythmic, revving-motorcycle momentum, like the Pixies without all the shrieking, or Sonic Youth without the frustrating feedback experiments. "Miami Skyline" is a New York Dolls update with glam-rock hit potential, and "BFF" contains this perfect line: "It's great to be a rock & roll star, no matter where you are. I'm going to heaven now." Or, if not heaven, at least on modern-rock radio play lists where they belong.

STEVE KNOPPER
(May 14, 2002)