 | Overall Rating: 8.3 Lyrics: 8.1 Melodies: 8.2 Arrangements: 8.7 Thematicity: 8.4 Originality: 8.2 Production: 8.8 |
These days, whenever one mentions My Bloody Valentine in conversation, it is inevitable that one's interlocutors, if they are at all well-acquainted with the history of indie rock, will express a good deal of admiration for Loveless, and for good reason: it presaged and profoundly influenced Hum and Yo La Tengo, proved that guitar rock could be atmospheric, and essentially invented shoegazer music. The unfortunate thing, however, is that My Bloody Valentine and Loveless have become practically synonymous; most people forget that Kevin Shields used to write pop songs before he started experimenting with noise. Records like Isn't Anything, which may not be is influential or as innovative as its follow-up turned out to be, but is certainly every bit as well-assembled and even more listenable, don't get their due these days, but Japanese pop artists Asobi Sesku are out to change that. When I say that Asobi Sesku's primary influence is My Bloody Valentine, I'm talking about the band's early, pre-Loveless material, for on thier sophomore effort, Citrus, the band's characteristic waves and walls of heavily-modulated guitar noise, thickly layered distortion, and faintly perceptible trickles, chimes, and swells beneath it all are there not for their own sake, but to further a solid set of extremely compelling pop songs whose true basis is in vocal melody. Singer Yuki Chikudate sings both in Japanese and English (often alternating between the two within a single song) with equal fluency, and in sharp contrast to many recent Scandinavian acts who attempt English lyrics, she delivers lyrics which, despite their seeming simplicity, come across as both pithy and evocative. Those who back her are accomplished musicians, and the overall result is without doubt the finest trans-Pacific import since Koenjihyakkei's Angherr Shisspa.
One of the most impressive things about Citrus is that it begins strong (with "Everything Is On" and "Strawberries," whose overlapping images of both sexual and sensory re-awakening set the album's introspective, dreamlike mood) and keeps up the momentum throughout, despite the fact that the tracklist is actually quite varriegated. As an example, take the mid-album track "Red Sea," which may clock in at over seven minutes and devote more than a third of that time to a noise-for-noise's-sake outro, but never drags and makes a strong claim to being the album's best individual track. An even stronger claim can be made for the song directly following it, the sentimental pop tune "Goodbye," though there are numerous outher tracks that aren't that far behind either, among them "New Years" and "Thursday." Lyrically, the album is remarkably solid as well, and avoids the pitfalls of pure cuteness, twisting it instead into apophthegms like "don't cry for sleeping kittens" and "it's a violent truth that I'm like you," which contain a deceptive amount of depth. Meanwhile, behind Chikudate's words, a rich blend (or perhaps puree would be a better word, given the amount of processing) of guitar noise, bells, organ drones, etc. adds to them two things that music that treads this close to noise-rock rarely can: structure and intensity. Of course this could never be classified as noise-rock, or even properly shoegaze, however; Citrus is at its heart a pop album, and in drawing from Isn't Anything rather than Loveless, it gives new life to a tired genre and gives credit to My Bloody Valentine's back-catalogue, where it is long overdue. Credit is also due to Asobi Sesku themselves, however: they are not mere epigones, but have developed a style and idiom all their own out of those of their influences, and the result is both impressive musically and enjoyable from beginning to end.
-BT
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