Review Summary: Shake hands with a trap.
The Pillows have been making the same sort of straightforward, driving rock for such a long time now that it’s easy to forget how weird their early albums could be. It’s not too surprising: there’s no hint of Kool Spice’s weird mishmash of styles to be found in the soundtrack of Fooly Cooly, which made the band (sort of) famous outside Japan. Kool Spice is a marked transition from the British jangle of their early records into an interesting interim period that preceded their final evolution into an American alt-rock inspired band.
What most stands out about Kool Spice (and its more fleshed-out successor, Living Field) is how effectively the band fools you into thinking you’re listening to something like jazz, most of the time. They’re helped on this curious quest by Tatsuya Kashima, a session bassist who stepped in after the departure of original bassist/songwriter/backup vocalist Kenji Ueda. He’s easily the most musically talented member of the band, and his proficiency goes a long way toward making a group of former new wave kids sound swingy.
On Kool Spice, The Pillows sound like they’re having fun, but under a guise; this is particularly evident on the first two tracks, which careen around cinematic jazz and big-band affectations. To call it precocious is putting it lightly, but it sure is fun, even if these songs are utterly devoid of the earnestness that characterized their later, more acclaimed albums.
Underneath the surface, though, it’s all fakery: this is quirky pop music pretending to be jazz. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and mostly due to the band’s own limitations than anything else; they sure try their darnedest on songs. The jazzy tracks of this album could be the soundtrack for an anachronistic Chicago gangster romance epic set in an art-deco 1930s Tokyo, where Japanese women wear exquisite gowns and arrive to the local gala in gold-plated, V12 Toyota limousines. Knowing frontman Sawao Yamanaka’s fandom for early Hollywood, it’s not much of a stretch.
Otherwise, it’s hard to tell exactly what the band wanted to accomplish on this record. It’s not more accessible or catchy than White Incarnation or Moon Gold. But it also doesn’t feel more self-consciously experimental or unrestrained. Kool Spice is something more like a flight of fancy, in album form. This is evident on later tracks like the weird kitsch of "Toy Doll" and its pseudo-seductive irony. “Naked Shuffle” is something resembling unhinged blues rock, while closer “Akanai Tobira no Mae de” is one of a handful of Pillows attempts at dreamy reggae.
Kool Spice doesn’t feel particularly cohesive, but the songs are enjoyable and have enough originality to make the record an interesting stylistic detour. In the end, it feels like a warm-up for Living Field - an album where most of the ideas here come into sharper focus, as the band’s innovation hits its high point.
