Viva La Foxx -- I Knew It Wasn't Love But ...

There was a news item recently about how a toy company was halting its plan for a line of dolls based on the stripper/dance troupe-turned-Pop "music" machine, Pussycat Dolls, due to an outpouring of parental outrage. Those parents' heads would explode if Northern Kentucky's Viva La Foxx were ever got the doll treatment. With a rotating cast of drummers, the trio's fiery, propulsive "Sex Punk" is an orgy of lacerating rhythms, orgasmic shrieks and balls-squeezing riffs, the soundtrack to a debauched after-hours romp as likely to end in bruises as it is blurry-eyed ecstasy. Searing, chaotic and abrasively sensual, Viva's debut CD, I Knew It Wasn't Love But ..., is eight tracks worth of primal impulsiveness. Singer/guitarist Amy Jo and bassist Danielle Belle volley vocal howls with the sass and insistence of a dominatrix, while Reuben Glaser (frontman of Blues exploders Pearlene) creates frenetic friction with his impetuous guitar bursts, spurting grimy, broken-bottle riffage with a wild-eyed intensity. Adding to the immediate, "you-are-at-the-party" quality, the group leaves in studio dialogue (Glaser requests whiskey before one song and coughs up a lung on another, while some ambient chatter reveals the rest of the album title -- "but I was fucking wet"). Highlights include "Dirty Drill," where Glaser pimps Zeppelin-meets-Gang-of-Four guitar angles, the Blues-'n-bombast strutter "Spitrocksfire" and the simmering, trippy "Getaway Car," which purrs like Sonic Youth on a Garage bender. Viva La Foxx emits a feral, smeared-eyeliner, don't-fuck-with-me swagger, but it's so fiercely fervent and volatile, you can't help but be drawn in deep. Viva La Foxx plays Northside's Shake It Records Saturday at 6 p.m. and later that night at Jacob's. (MB) Grade: A-

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