Let’s start from the end, which is to say, the climax: For a solid 30 seconds during the final song of We’re More Rock ’n’ Roll Than You, the latest EP from our local flock of shock rockers, The Falsies, listeners get an earful of sin from the devil and his dame. We’re talking some serious bedroom ruckus here, folks—guttural “gimme more” grunts from the Prince of Darkness.
| Listen to “Sexually Available” by The Falsies
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Here’s the thing about sex in rock music: You can treat it as an orchestral flourish, like Guns N’ Roses did with the rhythmically steady and pitch-perfect yelps in Appetite for Destruction’s “Rocket Queen,” or you can use it as an easy gag, like the crudely cathartic yelps that open White Zombie’s “More Human Than Human”—anyone who listened to rock radio in the ’90s remembers sharing an arched eyebrow with friends the first time they heard that one. It’s either tasteful or tasteless, a ’gasm or a gimmick. And, if this is your first time meeting the band, The Falsies grab gimmicks by the gullet and—oh yes I did—bang the hell out of ’em.
Keep in mind, however, that Appetite for Destruction and even White Zombie’s Astro-Creep 2000 were records that nabbed a lot of deserved radio play; our Falsies still make their name on chicken suits, cross-dressing and shout-along live shows, and even with the aid of some creative cover art, that’s a hard thing to translate to a record. Which makes We’re More Rock ’n’ Roll Than You a very pleasant surprise, a six-song EP that, at its best moments, is a damned close approximation of the band’s live show.
 For those about to mock: The Falsies crank up the sex and madness for We’re More Rock ‘n’ Roll Than You. |
Skip right through the heavy sweating of the record’s middle: “Donde Está Mis Pantalones?” is too easy a punchline for our finger-pulling punks, and the porno lounge tune “Sexually Available” meanders a bit too long between lyrical propositions. Each song could make for a nice, boozy sing-along the next time the band plays Dürty Nelly’s, but here the tunes just tack on a few extra minutes and yield only a couple chuckles.
| Listen to “Donde Está Mis Pantalones?” by The Falsies
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The Falsies fare better when they cut the foreplay. The opening title track is perfect rock braggadocio, a “Hey! Ho!” chant and power chords that bite at the heels of The Ramones, paired with the sort of finger-wagging snottiness that The Hives do so well. The second verse is as snippy as a season of “The Hills,” one of the Falsies gals chirping “We’re gonna knock your block all around the clock/ ’Cause all you do is tick tick tock tock tock.” The same tactic is used on the punchy follow-up, “Uh! Oh!”—the band turns its taunts on front- monster Peter Markush, who embraces the joke and whips a simple rhyme into a boast that doesn’t sacrifice melody for sneer.
“We Killed for Less” is the biggest surprise here, a penultimate pile of disco-punk that opens with keyboards straight out of A Clockwork Orange and breaks into what could be a Killers B-side: Lance Brenner snaps his cymbals while Markush does an honest-to-dance-floor impersonation of Killers singer Brandon Flowers that helps the band regain the momentum necessary for one final…you know…
The climax. There, I said it. And yes, “Satan is a Good Lay” is totally indulgent, totally a blast, some bizarre-o mash-up of Jon Spencer rockabilly and “South Park”’s take on the devil. And yes, it was good for me. Now will someone please get me a cigarette?
