Available at Amazon Japan
| Kegawa No Maries - Gloomy |
| Psychedelia
is notoriously difficult to define. Is it just a handful of signifiers
(fuzz guitar, reverb, drug references) that can be aped with the right
equipment? Or is there something deeper, a philosophy that has less to
do with specific sonics and more to do with making the listener feel
drugged, disoriented, or confused? What was mind expanding in the 60s
is simply nifty sounding now, what broke people's brains in the 70s now
seems less like a trip and more like a genre, complete with its own
boundaries. Point being, very few records anymore have the ability to
confuse the living shit out of you, which is exactly what happened to
me the first time I played Kegawa No Maries' latest disc, Gloomy. There I was, doing housework with it playing in the background. I think, for that initial play through, it actually took parts of my brain. Maybe some of the confusion came from the fact that I realized I'd have to review it, but I had no idea AT ALL of how to adequately describe the surreal mess that had invaded the house. It was obviously written, rehearsed, and recorded, implying a degree of planning, yet it inhabited its own otherworldly plane, a place where everything was familiar and readily identifiable, but infused with a strangeness that made the simple act of walking across the room seem treacherous. And when I say "familiar," I mean "stolen from The Beatles." The spine of Gloomy is the probably conscious decision to steal as much from The Beatles as humanly possible in terms of songs, structure, and riffs (and by "probably," I mean definitely: at the time of Gloomy's release, the band's official flash site kicked off with a "Help!" style graphic that says "Hell!") "Honey Apple" is "Get Back" with a somewhat different vocal line, but beyond that vocal line, they just TOOK the song, all the way down to the instrumentation, structure, and solos. It's by no means alone: "God Only Heavy Metal" does the same thing with "Helter Skelter," complete with guitar dive bombs, fake fade out, and "I Am The Walrus" nonsense vocals, "平和" ("Heiwa," i.e. "Peaceful") Is "Strawberry Fields Forever," etc. I swear, they digested the concept so completely that "超観念生命体私" ("Cho Kannen Seimeitai Watashi," i.e. "My Own Idea Of Life") manages to sound like a RUTLES cover without actually bringing any specific track to mind. So, a thinly veiled Beatles cover album? Well, kinda, but Kegawa No Maries manage to sound nothing like the Fab Four. Instead, they sound like a cover band, but one that's way, way, WAY too high to remember what parts go with which song, resulting in a deliciously sloppy hodge podge, a landscape that's instantly recognizable but completely exploded. It's a bizarre thought that, as a Japanese band, there's a very good chance that no one in the band has ever touched anything stronger than alcohol. They do occasionally manage to sneak the occasional non-Beatles rip: "ザ・フール" ("The Fool,") opens with "Walk On The Wild Side" doot-doots before collapsing into a ragged music hall shuffle, and "人生II" ("Jinsei II," i.e. "Life II") welds "Cruel To Be Kind" to, er, "I Want To Hold Your Hand's" bass line. And…uh, well, "人間不信" ("Ningen Fushin," i.e. "Misanthropy") lifts some stuff from Paul McCartney's solo career. Does that count? After you process that, the disorienting thing about Gloomy is that, despite the flagrancy of the steals, at no point do the songs ever sound like anything but themselves. This is the truly mind bending thing, the tension created when the human brain (mine, at least) hears something it knows intimately, yet can't quite pin down. It's this element that lifts Gloomy way above smartass covers album territory into…well, I still can't tell you what it is. But I do know I'll be playing it until I "get" it, and I'll love every minute. |