Review Summary: Quintessential J-rock album for every one of the reasons. Mandatory listening.
1) Mono no Huawei???
At the risk of sprucing up an absolute stinker of a moot point in the raiment of a eureka moment, in we go yoisho: Japanese culture is hella fatalistic. Not necessarily in a morbid way, or even in the typical usage of the word (i.e. believing that all things are predetermined), but in a very specific sense that emphasises that
everything that begins will end (usually with a ceremony either side). At a glance, this isn’t a particularly deep observation, and neither is it necessarily foreign - but if there’s one thing I can attest to after two years in the country, it’s that the notion of inescapable transience pervades an absurd amount of the national fabric.
Hold my beer while I explode that thought. It is, uh, yes, a glorified unpacking of those
mono no aware rose-lenses-for-the-present that you read about when Buzzfeed reposted the sleeve notes of your favourite Brooklynite indie-nothings, but that headspace extends far beyond the usual extended metaphor for the cherry blossom’s mayfly life. It’s all over the most banal parts of the everyday, in the stringency with which daily salutations and valedictions are observed in the workplace (along with countless framing courtesies for mealtimes, meetings, classes etc.), in the subtle edge that all this adds to repetition and routine. Everything happens in cycles and there is a system for everything so that everything can happen in cycles more easily. There’s an emphasis on the New Year as a time to pro-actively
finish the old year and wipe the slate clean; the haiku superimposes momentary insights over seasonal eternals (often with such specificity and/or obliqueness that said insight is lost beyond the moment and the poem practically memorialises the moment in which it occurred); the verbs
be born and
be buried are different conjugations of the same stem; Japanese companies regularly and rigorously rotate employees between separate branches on the basis that periodic fission makes for a more dynamic workforce.
All this amounts to a bittersweet complement to good ol’
carpe diem that acknowledges the futility of clutching onto the transitory in advance (Heraclitus’ river is a helpful parallel). Yeah. The examples listed are mainly prompts for further reading, scattered reflections of a wider (gulp) shared frame of mind that I refuse to illustrate any further because this quickly transcends the scope of the few things about Japan that I would claim to understand comprehensively. With all that said, the two relevant correlations that I’m prepared to slap down with firm conviction are that:
a) on a received, emotional level, the way some (many) Japanese artists engage with the transient as a continuous phenomenon gives their melancholia and nostalgia a far more expansive and, at points, majestic flavour than the comparatively piteous ego-mewlings that so often accompany Western artists’ attempts to translate similar impulses into pathos (aka emo) [1]. The Japanese have a firm stigma against doing things half-heartedly, and there’s a meticulousness to the way they approach their labyrinthian combinations of everyday rituals that, If not always linked to personal conviction, at least passes for dignity. In the light of that, consider the personal stakes that ideally underpin such exceptional ceremonies-in-effect as, say, musical performances, and it’s no surprise to hear so many Japanese acts see these off with such gravity.
b) within Japanese rock and (to a certain degree) pop, this focus on endings and rebirths correlates with a greater willingness to break moulds and reinvent familiar forms [2]. Established examples include Cornelius’ pastiche of every genre under the sun for the arcade-ready ‘90s zeitgeist, Number Girl’s transmutation of Pixie-esque indie bloodlettings into something meaner and, eventually, unrecognisably bizarre, Midori’s synthesis of a 3-piece jazz band with a one-woman punk frenzy, Supercar’s gorgeous pairing of alt rock and shoegaze with lush electronics, and every other song by Coaltar of the Deepers. Excluding Cornelius, these artists’ histories as studio bands are all succinct and thoroughly substantive; their innovations are complemented by a respect for their underlying inspirations as finite and non-recyclable. A much higher proportion of Japanese bands than Western emphasise the act of the dignified breakup as a career objective rather than an inadvertent burnout. Good things end.
2) It is now time to talk about BOaT.
BOaT were an alternative rock band from Tokyo and they played music between the years 1996 and 2004. They are best known for their cult classic EP
RORO (2001), which I shall not introduce in any further detail because I have neither heard it nor particularly care to at this very hyperpresent point in time! The reason for
this is that BOaT’s 2000 album
Listening Suicidal, my sole point of acquaintance with their work, is an absolutely phenomenal record and has completely monopolised my attention ever since I first came across it. It’s practically a ciphertext of everything I have ever loved about J-rock, with its kid-maniac burnings of energy, its screwball style-mashing, its bracing earnestness, its reckless love of dumb fucking loudness, and its frequent incomprehensible English. It electrifies every synapse my associations with the genre have crossed, commandeering my memory like a set of Christmas lights on a psychosomatic rampage in a Satoshi Kon movie and propelling me into a hyperattenuated sense of living in a moment - the moment! - that, in turn, is criss-crossed against however many other moments that have all died but are now momentarily alive again. It gives me a rare and extremely precious sense of knowing what I love, what I occasionally forget that I have loved. It is special.
It opens (and closes) with the kind of groovy goofball fuckery that would have felt at home on Cornelius’
Fantasma, only to quickly eschew that album’s clinical overtones on the
absolutely adorable “Planet Foxy”, a hug-of-thunder noise pop baller that should be fed into every decibel available and grinned upon with your whole face and whole heart. “Planet Foxy” is a perfect introduction to the album’s unapologetically brickwalled production, which compresses the melodious full-band arrangements into a weapons-grade outpouring of ecstasy and clamour on par with Shiina Ringo and Supercar at the peak of their overdriven powers. Both male and female vocalists holler as though the fate of the universe depends upon, and whether or not they ultimately save the world, their efforts do at least append some measure of meaning to the meaningless (“In the sky with the armond sexy / we sing the song from the planet foxy”, if Genius is to be trusted).
“Planet Foxy” is also the start of a seven-track run so flawless that the gloves must come off and a blow-by-blow must be dealt. Bare with me: “Kyogen Message” and “Daida Destroy & Search” are adrenalised Shibuya-kei knockouts that recall the likes of Cymbals and Swinging Popsicle at their most jangly, only to crank their pop excesses up to frankly irresponsible heights. The former in particular showcases the female vocalist at her most animate and infectious, whosoever she may be (throw dart at whichever vague credits list you can find). “Pretend” just fucking rips - ramping up the tempo, BOaT borrows choice riffs and vocal inflections from Sonic Youth’s “Mary-Christ” of all places (likely by coincidence) and dish out one of the catchiest barnstormers of the lot, while “Giniro Utsu Jikan” reaches for steadier pacing and dishes out spades of power pop perfection.
“Lucky Suicidal”, however, is the album’s strongest moment, and arguably the one most keenly in-tune with the musings of culturally enshrined impermanence that open this long shitting thinkpiece. Everything last facet of this song is in a gloriously untenable position of collision with every other: its opening Telecastic jangle and funk-inclined verses lurch without warning into jagged post-hardcore thrashings; its chorus proper is a frenzied alternation between the album’s must visceral screams and the most innocuous doo-doo-doos you ever shall hear; its English nonsense lyrics are superficially flippant, yet its frankly devastating bridge packs enough pathos to obliterate entire orphanages’ worth of small children. It covers an entire encyclopaedia of rock vocabulary in under three-and-a-half minutes, each incarnation of the form lived to the full. You bet this thing was destined to end. It's a miracle it even got off the ground.
Also significant here is “Goodbye My Strange Number - 28”, though for the opposite reasons. If “Lucky Suicidal” is a blur of twisted forms that sheds a thousand skins and disappears into thin air before anyone can mark its passing, “Goodbye…” is an off-kilter behemoth that heaves and skronks its way across a 10-minute runtime with as much majestic shapelessness and overdrive abuse as the band can muster. Contrary to the respect shown for structural confines and pop immediacy by (literally) every other track on the album, “Goodbye…” tenaciously clutches onto its moment over the course of an ongoing, non-cyclical range of permutations. Although it never overstays its welcome, the limits of this song’s longevity become more and more apparent as it goes on; when it finally does collapse under its own expanse, it scans as a dignified and very necessary admission of defeat.
3) Men In A BOaT
I think those two songs are key to this neverending double helix of twisted protracted fuck, i.e. what makes
Listening Suicidal such a phenomenal J-rock album, and what makes J-rock such a Japanese phenomenon. Time to circle back to the dark, dark cloud of ultra-macro cultural observations floating at the top of this page and weave a few of them into sturdier, sexier shapes. That shit was born from a 24-hr bender spent exclusively in the company of this wonderful record and All Of The Caffeine, and although I had faith that BOaT was sucking cultural observations through of my keyboard for cogent reasons, the full scheme of exactly how
Listening Suicidal ties to this took a couple of days (note from redraft #3: weeks) of reflection. And so: “Lucky Suicidal” snatches and traps the present as it occurs with just as much clarity and compression as any great haiku; “Goodbye My Strange Number - 28” wages a beautiful, doomed battle to turn it into a limitless sprawl. Both tracks are painfully conscious of their own temporality, which becomes a prompt to make the most of
every single second - which BOaT then of course do with such beautiful scuzzy zeal that the passing of those seconds becomes a kind of heart-capturing timebomb, an impossible spectacle of how-long-can-they-keep-it-up? Far beyond long enough, it turns out, though not forever - the record’s final third is a patchy, if endearing stretch by any evaluation: these tracks are no less creative, but their presentation frequently scans as overly twee and they lack the same focus:energy ratio as their earlier counterparts. No matter - the bottom line is that it’s been a staggeringly long time since I last heard a record strive so earnestly to do
everything and get so much of it astoundingly roof-raisingly right. This album exhausts a dazzlingly wide range of ideas in a way that enshrines the preciousness of exhaustible moments in which they occur. It is
good enough to make the passage of time meaningful, and neither ignorance of nor insensitivity to the transience of things are any excuse not to put it on this instant and bloody listen to it.
[1] Total digression, but closest thing I’ve heard to the Japanese end of this comparison from a Western artist is the unwinnable battle between childlike innocence and calcifying existential dread that Wayne Coyne’s psychedelic daydreams stage on the Flaming Lips’
Clouds Taste Metallic. That album has much in in common with BOaT’s Shibuya Kei roots (’60s psychedelia and sunshine pop inspirations equal parts revived and mourned in the feral, uneasy spirit of the ‘90s), but my gut feeling is that this is still a rather simplistic (though not superficial) comparison and that having penned it, I’ll end up reflecting on endless points of respective distinction in the coming days. Or not.
[2] Though there are just as many, if not more examples where a spirited recreation of whichever genre tropes in their established entirety seems to tick the boxes. Meaningful rituals etc..
