Here’s the debut album from the new band of them what used to be in the fondly-missed Urusei Yatsura. It’s released on their own label and was apparently ‘three years in the making’; it’s pretty much Urusei Yatsura Mark II, as once you get beyond the strange opening minute of quiet feedback and static, you’re straight into that familiar UY territory of noisy, discordant dynamics, with all of its swooping guitar lines, dual vocals and up-for-it positive energy. They sound perhaps a little more grown up these days, there’s a slight lessening of the relentless sugared-pill rush of prime UY, but hey, everybody gets a bit older. They’ve still retained that infectious combination of lazy-sounding vocals, tight song structures and an underlying chaos that often bubbles over into periods of mess. They’ve got one foot in indie pop music, the other in discordant guitar noise, a la Sonic Youth circa Goo. To throw some more comparisons into the mix: the optimistic rush of Pavement; the cheeky melodic basslines of Pixies; the scratchy emotions of Graham Coxon; the almost random note patterns of Built To Spill. We even get a couple of heart-on-sleeve acoustic-based numbers to round off the album, which are pretty much the only time the style moves outside frantic tempo and the tone beyond ADD optimism; but hey, why mess with a template when it’s this charming and enjoyable?

This is ‘Nothing Works Twice’ from the album:

Projekt A-Ko website

Posted: 05|4|09 at 11:42 am. Filed under: record reviews.
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