MUSIC REVIEWS
Gym Class Heroes - As Cruel As School Children
David Allun Jones
Take the honesty and wittiness of emo, throw in the wide-eyed musicianship of a quartet of high school music geeks and a front man influenced by both Tribe Called Quest and Linkin Park and you get Gym Class Heroes, an indie band that screams novelty (they were featured on the Snakes on A Plane soundtrack), but achieves victory just by being themselves. Part of the Fall Out Boy/ Panic! At The Disco set with more of a slant towards hip hop, GCH offer a revitalizing spin on frat boy humor and shoe-gazing introspection that threatens to be more long-lasting than their currently popular emo-pop peers.
Lead singer/ rapper McCoy is the perfect icing for the consistently surprising act’s pastry goodness, effortlessly flip-flopping from square emcee (“Biters Block”) to slightly-better-than-amateur vocalist (druggy R&B ballad “7 Weeks”, sunny 90’s throwback “On My Own Time”). His lyrics tackle age-appropriate concerns dressed in pop culture awareness minus the smarminess. “New Friend Request” updates the insecurities of dating for the modern-day MySpace set where instead of nervously awaiting a phone call, he becomes distressed to see he’s not a member of his obsession’s Top 8 (“And if you lovin’ what I’m speaking about than sing something/ I check my inbox ten times and ain’t nothing/ ...This is not an “LOL” matter”). “Scandalous Scholastics” hilariously reflects on an affair between a high school student and teacher who refuses to pass him unless he keeps “tapping that ass” while “The Queen and I” relays an odd attraction to an alcoholic (“She makes the cutest faces when she screams obscenities/ And slur her words because she’s never not inebriated”). The album’s supreme moment of genius arrives with a trio of “Sloppy Love Jingle” skits, a spoken word re-telling of a night that begins with him buying a girl a drink in the bar. Done in episodic matter, McCoy’s passionate acapella performance and impressive attention to detail leaves you excited for what’s going to happen next in the on-going saga.
Even without lead singer/ rapper Travis McCoy’s colorful display of white boy rhymes, Gym Class Heroes prove to be a pretty sturdy music collective. With minimal assistance from members of Arrested Development, The Academy Is… and Fall Out Boy, their style runs the gamut of college band clichs (hyped scratching and obsolete samples, pinched funk/ reggae riffs, loose R&B jamming, melodic guitars straight out of the indie rock playbook) but they never cave in to such ambitious musical goals, effectively holding down the instrumentation angle with as mush seriousness and wonder as expected from a group of mid-twenty-somethings.
A pleasurable blend of memorable soundbites and trusty musicianship guaranteeing enjoyment with repeated listenings, As Cruel as School Children puts Gym Class Heroes in that rare group that’s fun to listen without needing to hide their CD when guests come over. Besides, anybody with the balls to take on Jermaine Stewart’s embarrassing pro-abstinence 80’s smash “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off” and transform it into something as delectably naughty as “Clothes Off” deserves nothing but recurring worship in my book.
