The Virgins: The Virgins : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

These New York dance rockers are definitely not virgins. Their debut screams debauchery, with its funk- and disco-spiked odes to oversexed debutantes and every club kid's favorite meal, "cocaine brunch." Such subject matter has inspired some bad records over the years, but the Virgins have a knack for songcraft — scrabbling funk verses that surge into singalong rock choruses — and a charismatic frontman who delivers stellar aphorisms and insults. "Maybe if you change your hair/You'd be good enough," Donald Cumming sneers in "Fernando Pando." He knows of what he sings: Cumming has been a fixture of New York's downtown demimonde since he was 16, making films and modeling for hip young photographer Ryan McGinley. But he's done plenty of book learning, too, drawing on Lou Reed and the late-Seventies Rolling Stones: "She's Expensive" lifts its groove from "Miss You." Cumming has the swagger down, but there are surprising depths in songs like "Love Is Colder Than Death." These roués know well that when the last afterparty ends, spiritual malaise lingers.