"Go East, young women, go East," sang the siren. And Boy Skout heeded that harpy’s call and relocated to NYC from San Francisco in the dead and dread of a New York City winter. If ever there was a group destined to be a New York, New York outfit, Boy Skout (alternately known as Boyskout and BoySkout) is it. We caught them for the first time at Pianos as a trio - their keyboardist/vocalist having recently departed. And we had heard that the transition to a threesome had punked them up a bit more. Never seeing them before, I don’t know. I do know they’re a very powerful band with the current line-up.
The vocal delivery and dynamic guitar of the classically cool Leslie Saterfield (think a rock 'n roll version of Katherine Denueve’s Mariam Blaylock) soon had the girls (and guys) up in front of the stage, getting the hunger and wondering what it’d be like to live in her attic for an eternity or two. And if that isn’t enough, Hannah Reiff comes on like a current day Ellen Ripley. With legs spread wide, she slyly wields her Fender bass like a techno death blaster and we helpless aliens in the audience know we are dead meat from the get go. And rounding out the cinematic analogies (this is a very visual group) is Carrie Walker Mills driving this band of road warriors from behind her kit, laying down lethal shake-yur-butt beats, adding powerful vocals and occasionally fiddling with a laptop to add the missing-in-action keyboards, etc. When an equipment malfunction caused a mid-set lull, Saterfield kept things going with a dead-pan, hilarious recollection of her school girl days followed by an a cappella straight-ahead version of “Harper Valley PTA.” If this bit isn’t a regular part of their act, it should be. Boy Skout is sugar and spice and also everything not so fuckin’ nice. Cool.
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