Boyskout initially put out a single on clear vinyl in 2003 on Isota Records, “Secrets” b/w “Pictures from the Moon”. Their music caught the attention of the Bomp! Records label Alive Records, which included two Boyskout songs on their compilation album, The Sound of San Francisco. The two songs were “Secrets” and “School of Etiquette” – of these three early songs, only “Secrets” is on the Alive CD, even though the name of the CD is School of Etiquette.
The debut album by Boyskout, School of Etiquette came out on Alive Records in January 2004. Mark Jenkins with the Washington Post has written of this album: “If some CBGB’s Frankenstein had managed, circa 1977, to transplant Patti Smith’s sensibility into Blondie’s garage-band pop, the result would have sounded something like BoySkout’s School of Etiquette. Outfitted in such New Wavey accessories as sneakers and skinny ties, this lesbian-rock quartet revives such Smithian motifs as drowning and the erotic appeal of outlaws, but with girl-group bounce. School of Etiquette may not be genteel, but it is impeccably arranged.”
BoySkout’s music is more new wave than riot grrrl; other ingredients are old-style punk sensibilities plus a love of catchy pop tunes, and it seems clear to me that the bandmembers have been enjoying their Sleater-Kinney albums. The songs have an underlying current of angst and suspicion coupled with a sense of fun. For instance, the anxious music on “Secrets” creates a feeling of foreboding underlying these lyrics: “She told you all my secrets / She knew them all so well / She told you all my secrets / . . . She promised not to tell . . .”
(January 2014)
