| Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her - Future Or No Future |
| Aiha Higurashi is SUCH a smartass. First, she chooses the moniker “Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her” (from the XTC song) because she thinks it’s “too long.” And it just kind of goes from there: jagged, smartass, sneering, weary, too-blasé-to-worry-about-being-cool rock that finds itself in the wiggly space between pre-electronic Wire, “Surfer Rosa” era Pixies, and the first Pretenders album. But the irony reaches a peak with the cover of the band’s final album, appropriately titled “Future Or No Future.” The more 80s than thou graphics make the group look like bubbly, cheesy mallrats: the kind that worshipped Debbie Gibson, spent all their money on shoes, and monopolized the family Princess phone (depicted on the cover.) Even the inner sleeve shows the duo asleep on their beds, phones uncradled, surrounded by hairbrushes and dolls. One could be forgiven for thinking this was aimed squarely at 14 year old girls, provided one didn’t look too closely at the track listing (“Fuck It Up And Get Hurt”?) That said, the 80s references aren’t purely a red herring: “Let’s Dance” uses stuttering samples and blurpy keyboards that could have been lifted from any number of early MTV favorites, “Chik Chik A.A.” could almost be an out take from ‘New Traditionalists” era Devo, "Sentimental Journey" (no, not that one) comes on like a sideways Mission of Burma, and single “Lullaby” opens with a guitar riff that’s just a note or two away from Wire’s “Mannequin.” Interspersed throughout the rest of the album are more typical Seagull signposts: cranky, just this side of off key guitar riffs, Sonic Youth gone pop textures, and of course, Higurashi’s droll, almost twangy vocals. That said, there are some changes here beyond the cosmetic. There’s only one full-fledged song here (the aforementioned “Chik Chik A.A.”) with lyrics brief enough to fit on a gum wrapper, and five of the songs feature Japanese (the vast majority of the SSKHKH catalog is in English.) In the past, Higurashi would simply present her skeletal compositions without much embellishment, creating distilled, minimalist pop music that had more than a little in common with the angular, brevity-is-the-point work of early Wire or Guided By Voices. Here, these are fully produced, verse-chorus-verse pop songs, less repetitive, more hook centered. And also like Wire and Guided By Voices, the change to more conventional territory doesn’t hobble the band, at least on pop music terms. The embellishments serve the songs well: closer “Six In The Morning” ‘s mournful violin offsets the song’s slowed, narcotic “Bulldog Skin” chug as Higurashi wakes up to her lover coming in after a long night partying without her. “You trying to make me warm again? Just don’t get on my nerves” she moans, as the strings build to a climax that would be syrupy in lesser hands. “Smoking cigarettes and sigh, no memories left, and I think of you…you left me what?” The “what” isn’t a query, but a challenge: give me a reason not to boot your ass out on the street. But it’s not all disgust…the whispered “sex” in the background suggests she’s not quite as done with this loser as you might think. The nerves might not be as raw as the bleak, bitter “17,” or the contempt as pronounced as on “No! No! No,” but “Future Or No Future” is hardly mellow. After SSKHKH ended, Higurashi went on to a solo career, wrote Judy And Mary vocalist Yuki’s debut solo single, and eventually formed the band Loves. Her body of work can be a thorny proposition: it’s not happy pop music. “Future or No Future” might strike the right balance between venom and sugar for first time listeners. |