Review Summary: A scrappy but ultimately auspicious debut for Osaka's bygone jazz-punks
For those unfamiliar, Midori was an Osaka band that fused a jazz rhythm section and piano with the violence and aggression of punk. They put out a string of releases from 2005 to 2010 before disbanding without fanfare, over which time they acquired a major label contract in Japan and a cult following across the world. Like any good fusion band, their sound is more than the sum of its (admittedly obvious) parts; it stands squarely as its own phenomenon and, for this reason, has aged surprisingly well. Yoshitaka Kozeni’s drums and Keigo Iwami’s double bass lay down the roadmap, pianist Hajime takes the lead on the instrumental side, and vocalist/guitarist Mariko Goto spits and yelps her way over her bandmates’ framework while punctuating tracks with blasts of distortion. Not a particularly complex formula, but it worked – Midori’s work is both hellishly infectious and infectiously hellish, but I would also argue that there was a constant tension surrounding their unashamed bizarreness which continually put them in jeopardy of being a fad, novelty, or gimmick band.
However, almost a decade since their breakup, it is my view that their shelf life is longer than might have been expected and that it is well worth combing their discography to elaborate as to why. This brings us to the beginning (minus a couple of early demo tapes): as debuts go,
First is certainly a shaky start with flashes of the band’s full potential. It’s clear from the outset that Midori had a clear idea of what their sound was and how it would theoretically work; it’s clear that they they were keen to show this off, but there’s a nagging feeling that sinks in within the opening bars of
First that they were punching above their weight.
わっしょい。bursts through the floodgates with as much off-kilter savagery and marked jazz influence as any future outing, but the song’s confidence doesn’t quite land squarely. It’s in the way Goto reaches for a guttural scream far beyond her range, in the way the lurching rhythm and jumpy structuring are arresting and jarring without actually tying the song together. It’s fun for sure, but fun in a way that stems from cheap shock value rather than musical strength; the secret to Midori’s best work is that behind the grotesquerie and violence of its execution is a solid bedrock of songwriting and musicianship, both perfectly engaging in their own right.
First leans a little too heavily on the former, to the degree that it doesn’t take long for the latter’s lack of refinement to show through.
On that note, the third track (ああ嫌) is a hellish mishmash of awkward rhythms that lack even the redeeming qualities (dynamism and energy) that just about kept わっしょい afloat. It’s the worst example of all this EP’s flaws and I would recommend anyone to be skip it liberally. The same goes for the atrocious closer,
POP – when I saw the title and heard the major key opening chords, I expected something a little more subversive than a half-hearted traipse through the blandest of melodies. I can accept that a band like Midori rolling out a crap pop song counts as a passable outing of irony, but they could have done something so much more interesting with this.
It’s telling that two of the strongest tracks here, お猿 and *マンティック夏モード, would be rerecorded on future outings (
We Are Midori and
Shimizu, respectively) – the reworked versions are not structurally different but do come across as the work of a more focused band whose confidence had a much stronger musical foundation. That’s not to say that they don’t sound great on
First - *マンティック夏モード definitely comes close to overkill at points, but its manic frenzy is enjoyably ridiculous, while お猿 is probably the best track here and demonstrates a real knack for upbeat songwriting – but underscoring even the best tracks on an EP with the concession that “…we’re going to get these completely right further down the line” does not make for a great retrospective endorsement.
I’ve been harsh on
First because it falls short of the significantly higher standards set by the band’s later work (and because I actively dislike one third of its tracklist…), but there’s still a lot to appreciate here. For all its rawness and chunkiness, one thing that Goto, Hajime and co. had in spades was attitude, and while that attitude did lead to a couple of awkward own-goals, it makes even the half-decent parts of
First a blast to listen to. Conveniently enough, the best example example of this is my favourite track on the EP,
A.N.A. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether or not this is a ‘good’ song insofar as its rhythmic unison between Goto’s yelps and the militaristic drumming screams of the shock value tendencies I criticised earlier and
sounds like it should be annoying (I’m sure a lot of people out there would utterly loathe this song…), but the intensity with which they go for has some bizarre charm and hooks me every time. The rising and falling of Hajime’s menacing, albeit straightforward, piano part also showcases Midori’s knack for shifting dynamics particularly well, which gets many bonus points in my book.
In its way,
A.N.A spells out the most important ground rule for Midori: their style is relentlessly oddball, but they put enough conviction into it that in (not inaccurately) reducing them to descriptions such as ‘silly’, ‘immature’ or, worst of all, ‘gimmicky’ misses out a sense of spark that runs through all their work and elevates it from a trite experiment to worthwhile music. This, to me, is the essence of the ‘punk’ side of their sound; the musical chops behind the jazz side speak for themselves, but it’s the bizarre synergy lurking behind the unlikely or bold facets of Midori’s sound that made them a great band (or, for sceptics, a noteworthy band). That synergy materialises somewhat fleetingly on
First, but those moments are enough to make it a worthwhile listen and to indicate the scope to which the band’s future efforts would rise.
To be continued…
