 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.
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Available at Amazon Japan
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