Review Summary: Buck-Tick's back-to-basics, mid-career slump.
Contrary to the general opinion among Buck-Tick fans that “13-kai Wa Gekkou” was their finest mid-career moment, I have always thought of it as their first dip in creativity, and “Tenshi no Revolver” was their subsequent attempt at digging themselves out of there, often with mixed results.
A stripped down affair of rock ‘n’ roll proper, it seemed the kind of thing that a band of a stature like Buck-Tick would have easily aced—although its members aren’t exactly known for their virtuosity save for lead vocalist Atsushi Sakurai, the band always keeps up by working in interesting musical arrangements and inventive textural work—yet unfortunately, only rarely does this stuck the landing. It starts off nicely with a decidedly retro-sounding ramshackle rocker “Mr Darkness And Mrs Moonlight”, a Bauhaus-nodding track with a tiny bit of the Stones in it. Then comes the dud, as early as the second track: the generic early-aught’s pop-rock song “Rendezvous”, which could have been more palatable if both guitarists had done more than just mindlessly strumming octaves and barre chords. “Montage”, “Beast”, and “Spider” tragically have the same problem. “Alice in Wonder Underground” fares a little better, but is undercut by an awkward moment before the final bridge and chorus, that trades the expected guitar solo for lead guitarist Imai’s singing gibberish over an actually nice chord progression. The greatest offender, however, is the sappy ballad at the middle of the album,“Rain” which boasts a nice little bluesy solo and not much else. It is obviously a byproduct of a miscalculation by whoever it was in charge of sorting the set list, judged by its unnecessary inclusion when there’s another sappy ballad (“Snow White”) which does everything “Rain” tried to accomplish (forlorn violins, cliched excursion to the harmonic minor, emotional “rawness”) but is vastly superior in every way.
Knowing it’s Buck-Tick, however, there’s always something to salvage even in their most vapid releases (except for their latest, “Abracadabra”, but that’s a story for another time). The stomping, Bo Diddley beats of “Lily” wears its yearning heart on its sleeve, an earnest power pop number with equally sweet lyrics penned by Imai. “Cream Soda”, one of the two songs written by the rhythm guitarist Hoshino Hidehiko (the other being the aforementioned “Snow White”), drunkenly struts with abandon through seemingly disparate musical parts, glued only by tritone-inflected harmonies and infectious, poppy choruses. The Latin-inspired acoustic rocker “Zekkai” is endlessly fun and goofy. The album closes magnificently with “Revolver”, a furious anti-war punk number with a drum riff reminiscent of The Clash’s “Tommy Gun” and particularly affective lyrics; it’s (presumably dead) protagonist maniacally taunts the warmongers of the world to shoot everything to oblivion.
Overall, “Tenshi no Revolver” is a spotty album with patches of brilliance. The highs are very high, the lows tragic, the mediocre ones hinges desperately on its ability to deliver mildly catchy choruses. It suffers from the very same problem that marred the previous album—uninspiring guitar arrangements, milquetoast harmonic structures—but unlike “13-kai”, this one had no sweeping synths and “spooky” atmospherics to gloss it up. The production is stale (as expected of a back-to-basics album), the guitar tones sound pleasing enough but nothing to write home about. With a little more effort, this could be a pick and mix of everything that made Buck-Tick great, but at times they seemed hellbent on shooting the revolver the wrong way.
