November 2002

Cellars By Starlight

Pop secrets
The Figgs's Slow Charm, All the Queen's Men's Curvy Baby
BY MATT ASHARE

    JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT that the question of gender equality in rock had been settled years ago, along comes Rolling Stone with another "Women in Rock" story — and puts Christina Aguilera naked with a guitar on its cover. The members of local band All the Queen's Men happened to spot this issue on the way to our interview, and it reminded them why they'd called their new album Curvy Baby (on their own Mad Monarchy label). "Just shows that there's still a double standard," says singer/keyboardist Christine Zufferey. "Male performers are allowed to be ugly and women are still expected to be thin; they're all scantily clad and heavily made up. We think that more curvy people shouldn't be afraid to show their curves."

The three women in All the Queen's Men are in fact perfectly thin (as is newly added bassist Joe Kowalski) — it's their sound that's heavy. AQM are a different kind of electronic band: they generate their sound by doctoring natural instruments instead of programming from scratch. Originally a straight-ahead guitar outfit, they took the plunge when drummer Tamora Gooding got herself an electronic kit. The new disc sports a sleek, metallic sound, with brittle sheets of guitar by Catherine Capozzi, a former student of Reeves Gabrels, a current Boston Rock Opera fixture, and an overall bad-ass player. She says her influences are Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, but the distorted styles of Robert Fripp and Boston's own Rich Gilbert are also apparent in her playing.

The former frontwoman of January and Sabot, Swiss native Zufferey seems more at home here, with a heavily accented and exotically European style (including a Marlene Dietrich impression at the beginning of "Alive"). What's new is a lyrical bite that didn't turn up in her previous bands. When she takes on a sexy tone, you can bet she's doing it for ironic effect, most explicitly on "Pig in the City," which she wrote with Capozzi. "Should I conform, should I deform, to get a deal silicone, peroxide blonde, Barbie clone . . . " No wonder she didn't dig the Aguilera cover. "I guess that I'm a little more open to be free with my thoughts," she says. "That song and a few others are about trying to adopt your personality to fit into society." It was also inspired, she says, when a guy at a club once complimented a male guitarist on his playing and then complimented Capozzi on her shirt.

Although the rock elements outweigh the electronic ones on Curvy Baby, the band have also included a remix disc where a number of producers, many recruited by Zufferey's brother in Switzerland, were invited to go wild. Most of them turn in trancier versions of the material, sometimes filtering out the guitars and vocals. "When we play, we're still essentially a rock band, but I'd love to be able to take this into the dance clubs," says Capozzi. "The two schools that we're interested in, rock and electronica, don't seem to play well together, so we're looking to bridge the two." All the Queen's Men celebrate the release of Curvy Baby this Friday, November 15, at Bill's Bar.

Issue Date: November 14 - 21, 2002

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