| Aunt Sally |
| Aunt
Sally tends to get called a punk album, and while it clearly eschews
the standard rock 'n' roll template in ways that would have been more
or less unthinkable before punk's first wave of iconoclastic ranting,
it has virtually nothing to do with what is typically associated with
punk. Paradoxically confrontational and unassuming, eerie, and deeply
unsettling, it doesn't work as an album so much as a slice of
especially weird mental tourism. It's almost best not to know anything about it before listening, as its creepy, atonal drift through cabaret, lullabies and awkward surf rock comes off as even more uncanny when matched with a sense of mystery. People made this music, chose to have it sound the way it does, and the less you know about them, the more the self titled album makes your skin crawl. Who are these, people, and what's wrong with them? The creeping sense of dread is only accented by the occasionally amateurish playing. The opening, self titled track is disorientation incarnate, a swirling pool of psychedelic guitar washes, clunky drumming, and vocalist Phew's strangely stable off key caterwauling. It doesn't sound like a human band so much as a band of animatronic robots in a haunted amusement park, inexplicably coming to life, running through a hideously distorted pop song. It's followed by "かがみ" ("Kagami," i.e. "Paragon,") which takes Hoagy Carmichaels' "Heart And Soul" and somehow makes it simultaneously bright and chilling. Aunt Sally, the album is full of these uncanny moments, moments which don't feel like songs so much as uncomfortably private peeks into the psyche of a disturbed person. The album is bookended by six minute plus compositions, but is typified by one and two minute slices of unease. "I Was Chosen" is the musical equivalent of hiding under the sheets as a little kid, a weirdly hushed musical box tune that occupies a space that UK creepsters Pram would inhabit decades later. "日が朽ちて" ("Hi Ga Kuchite," i.e. "Decaying Sun") sounds it was composed by a disturbed teenage girl, sitting in an asylum, staring out the window in an oblivious trance. Even when the album picks up a bit in terms of its ostensibly "punk" roots, it's more skewed than rousing. "すべて売り物" ("Tsubete Urimono," i.e. "Everything's For Sale") would be an energetic cheeseball surf rocker if it didn't sound like Phew was welding an axe while delivering her vocal. The off center creepiness permeates every inch of the album. While Aunt Sally may work better when nothing is known about the participants, vocalist Phew would go on to become one of Japan's most visible avant garde leaning vocalists, working most famously with members of Can and Einsturzende Neubauten, not to mention releasing a Ryuichi Sakamoto produced debut single after Aunt Sally's brief existence. I have to admit that I'm still a bit baffled as to why the word "punk" keeps being attached to this haunted slab of mentally unhinged art pop, when "music to skip your medication by" seems to be much more appropriate. Whatever terms one chooses to apply, this brief missive from the Osaka five piece has found its rightful place in the lexicon of Japanese rock, most recently finding itself at the #39 position of the best 100 Japanese rock albums of all time for Record Collector's Magazine. It's not easy, but let it under your skin, and wait for that skin to crawl. |