Album Review: 7X4 – Gore Gore Girls
The Gore Gore Girls’ 7X4 is a stop-gap release of sorts, as it was basically EP put together for sale during the band’s late 2004 run of shows with The Cramps. The real drawing point here is that three of these songs are covers that seem to be exclusive to this release (“No Big Thing,” “All Grown Up” and “You Lied to Me Before”) – “Sweet Potato” appears on a 7″, and the other three songs are slated to appear on the band’s forthcoming album, Get the Gore.
This collection’s got a surprisingly retro vibe going for it; perhaps that’s a result of Jim Diamond’s recording/engineering influence, as the material for 7X4 was done with Diamond at Ghetto Recorders last year. Based on the band’s live shows, I would have figured that the consensus would have been to expect a much more modern sound from these ladies. Regardless, the Gore Gore Girls seem to have decided to get behind the retro angle 100% for 7X4, such as busting out the old school 60’s pop style backing vocals and keyboard/piano parts on the sugary sweet tracks “All Grown Up” and “Sweet Potato” (and yes, admittedly, the band’s choice of cover material most likely affected the overall sound of these recordings a bit).
That’s not to say that this release doesn’t (pardon the expression) have some balls to it at times. Frontwoman Amy Surdu sounds pissed as hell on “Loaded Heart” and “Mary Ann”; when words just won’t cut it though, the girls do a fine job of letting the guitars speak for them during the garage guitar soloing that closes out the album on “You Lied to Me.” In its most commendable point, though, the disc combines both of these elements into one three-minute burst of ‘go-go-dancers-meet-bad-ass-rocker-girls’ goodness on the glorious “Casino.”
It’s a bit odd to close out a capsule review of 7X4 by filing this under ‘rocker girls gone (temporarily?) retro pop,’ but it seems that’s the best way to describe this release. There’s definitely enough of Surdu’s trademark vocal sneering here to make this a recognizably Gore release, though, and amongst all the retro-production and such, drummer Nicky Styxx and bassist Jen “The Deuce” Pirch create some damned fine rhythm sections. It has to be said that this disc might be a bit off-setting to folks looking for the more straight-up rocking side of the Gore Gore Girls, though 7X4 does manage to stand on its own merit as a very listenable release. – Gary Blackwell