 It's
real easy to be cynical about Puffy. Two cute girls (well, women now)
who were put together in a band every bit as artificially constructed
as the Monkees, who don't write their own stuff, yadda yadda yadda.
It's practically a requirement for guys like me to either dismiss them
as irrelevant, roll his eyes at how "artificial" they are, or, at best,
file them under "guilty pleasure." Thing is, guys like me have a bad
habit of forgetting that some of the best rock music ever made was done
under similarly "artificial" circumstances. Take the aforementioned
Monkees: very few music critics in 2008 would complain about their
perceived artificiality, and the ones who do would be (quite rightly)
ignored by most people. Time has a way of stripping away flimsy ideals,
and the sheer strength of their catalog is testament to the fact that
music isn't insincere just because the instrumentalists and writers aren't the ones with
their faces on the cover.
For Puffy, there's an extra layer to this particularly sticky issue,
since in the west they're sold as sugary cute cartoon characters, more
appropriate to pre-teens than anyone old enough to vote. Well,
actually, that was pretty much also true with the Monkees, but the point is that Puffy's
image outside of Japan doesn't indicate the (for Jpop artists) atypically edgy classic
punk and arena rock ambitions they've flirted with for the last few
albums. There's a reason Andy Sturmer, Jellyfish honcho and one time
savior of the classic rock tradition, was a main contributor up
thorough "Honeycreeper's" predecessor, the mostly excellent "Splurge."
There's also a reason that guest stars on their recent albums have
included such icons of aggression and abrasiveness as Thee Michelle Gun
Elephant's Yusuke Chiba, and Guitar Wolf. Yes, GUITAR WOLF.
Now that we've cleared up that particularly pernicious bit of rock crit
guilt, let's take a look at "Honeycreeper." It's another solid
collection of meaty, power chord based, lighter in the air arena rock, the kind that
would be hailed as the second coming of rock 'n' roll if it was written
and produced by the people on the front cover. It's got a dominant streak of pop, of
course, and it is a bit bewildering to see that, reading the credits,
there doesn't seem to be any creative core of people: Ami and Yumi are
the only people who are on every song, and they don't play a thing
(although they are credited with lyrics on two tracks.) Even the
producers change from song to song.
Given this, the album's strength and consistency isn't just surprising,
it borders on shocking. It should be a riot of ideas, barely held
together by the thinnest of threads (like the entertaining but WAY too
schizophrenic "Fever Fever.") Nope, this is a play it all the way
through rock album, and the high points are many. "君とオートバイ"
("You And The Motorbike," written by the aforementioned Chiba) is a
sweet whirlwind of adrenaline, joy, and crunch guitars worthy of such
punk legends as The Buzzcocks and The Damned. In fact, "くちびるモーション"
("Lip Motion") has more than a few Buzzcocks worthy touches, from the
Pete Shelly riff to the catchier-than-the-chorus guitar parts. There's
also the über pop of "Closet Full Of Love,"
which takes Gary Numan style keyboards, swelling strings, and a
soaring, surprisingly in your face chorus and sews it all together to
creates something that stays stuck in your head for days afterwards.
I could go on, but you get the point. The lack of consistency in the
credits doesn't translate into incoherency, instead doing what it
should: keeping things fresh. Believe me, I understand the cognitive
dissonance of crediting a corporate invention with one of the best rock
albums of 2007, but I also gotta be honest. "Honeycreeper" is a great
album.
---
Available through Amazon US.
|
