Available at Amazon Japan
| Plastics - Origato Plastico |
| It's
easy to over simplify the past. "New Wave," for most people, is a
mainstream pop phenomenon, all parachute pants, weird haircuts, and
bouncy synths. Unless you're heavily into music history (or are old
enough to have been there, ahem,) you probably don't think of New Wave
as shocking, ironic, occasionally subversive, and every bit as screwed
up as the punk that preceded it. This issue isn't exactly cleared up any by the fact that a lot of purveyors of New Wave adopted ironic, snarky, "happy" personas that were intended to lampoon consumer culture. The whole point was that there was contempt behind the smile, a kind of smirk that was so contextual and implied that many people missed it completely... it's like the guy that shows up at the party and is TOO nice: it's mockery, not camaraderie (and in fact, many of the early New Wave bands that worked from edgy, avant garde intentions have, after the fact, been commonly thought of as lightweight radio fodder: Thomas Dolby, Modern English, ABC, etc.) Plastics don't have that issue, since their irony and snark spilled over into the notes and sounds, wrecking it's potential as lightweight pop you could enjoy passively. It's still pop, though: while they have an obvious basis in pop structures (verse, chorus, etc.) there's more Pere Ubu than Pet Shop Boys, with a healthy dose of ironic Japanese smartass. The Pere Ubu comparison is not a throwaway: from the opening track, "Origato Plastico"shares quite a bit with what was, at the time, contemporary Ubu: happy but off kilter guitar, rickety beats, animal calls that don't really sound like any animal I'm aware of, and surreal, circular lyrics. But while Ubu was over the map, and often as not indecipherable, Plastics keep an eye on a traditional song base, albeit a highly mutated one. "Dance In The Metal" takes a waltz beat and completely ignores every other possible element that signifies a waltz. Then there's "No Good," a bizarre chant that consists entirely of vacuous greetings ("How do you do? / How are you? / Nice to meet you / See you again / What's the matter?" Repeat.) The dose of ironic, specifically Japanese smartass is similarly important...it's what makes the whole thing come together, giving a context for the otherwise baffling overload of quirk and twitch. Without it, it's difficult to think of why anyone would choose to create this kind of thin, paranoid anti pop: vocalist Chika doesn't sing so much as bounce off the walls like a too happy housewife, amped up on a whole pot of coffee. Co-vocalist Toshi seems positively stoic by comparison, but only by comparison: when the consumer culture mockery of "Cards" reaches it's foul mouthed, ridiculously over the top climax, he sounds ominously serious. It's as if he's spilled over from ironic posing to actually believing that we're headed for a future where we'll have credit cards for genitals (ouch.) All lyrics are in English, occasionally sung in exaggerated Japanese accents, for an extra kick of sarcasm ("Diamond Head," a rumination on Western philosophy, is punctuated with Chika shouting "Oh, fuck off baby / Don't be so serious" with diction so stiff it borders on military.) In "Back To Wigtown," Chika deadpans "You're Oriental and we're Oriental too / Speaking in Japanese with each other is so strange / Always talking about somebody famous" as creepy, densely packed sonics lurk in the background. There's a lot of layers to Plastics' music, and once the context finishes sinking in, the complexity of the music is revealed. "Ignore" sounds like an unholy union of Mayo Thompson Pere Ubu, Lene Lovich, and the Tiki Room at Disneyworld. "Good" (which, naturally, comes right after "No Good,") sounds like debut era B52s with added psychedelia and without the kitsch. A brief surf guitar solo is underscored with Chika, um, meowing along. For music that seems at times skeletal, there's an amazing amount of ideas and sonic detail. Of course, music this context heavy and aggressively odd takes patience, which is why Plastics aren't for everyone. It's also easy to misread their intentionally artificial sound as merely dated, or needlessly "wacky." If one sticks with it though, it's one of those albums that can profoundly, albeit temporarily, alter the way you view your surroundings. |