| Wienners - Cult Pop Japan |
| Years
ago, I had a job working at a school. Not just any school, but a
pre-school for Japanese kids whose parents wanted to give them a head
start on English. The kids ranged anywhere from five years old all the
way down to the later months of the terrible twos. Like any job, there
were good days and bad days, but even the bad days had at least one
moment that was titanically hilarious, like the four year old who
insisted on doing the "butt dance" in response to any and all
questions, or the kid who spent the entire day with his hands stretched
out in front of him, shouting "Oppai! Oppai!" ("Boobs! Boobs!") as he
chased the rather well-endowed nurse around the room. Coming back from an American visit, I made the mistake of bringing a large box of Twinkies for the class to share. Japanese kids' diets tend to be healthier than their western peers, so their mega dose of processed sugar hit extra hard, resulting in an hour or so of what looked like the world's youngest, happiest mosh pit. Seriously, I've seen full blown Slayer pits that were less enthusiastic. I think…no, I'm CERTAIN…that the members of Wienners spent their more than fair share of toddler time driving their poor Moms absolutely bonkers, and frankly, it sounds like they never stopped. They certainly don't seem to have grown up: when talking about energetic music, words like "manic" and "insane" get thrown around a lot, but in all my years of record geeking, I have literally never heard any band that encapsulates the sheer shit-losing joyousness of a properly wired little kid with such spot-on, ADD emulating hysteria. Talking about their music is like trying to bottle a tornado; of course, the tempos are drummer-killing fast, but it's not just that. The super short tracks (anywhere from twenty seconds to an epic two minutes) cram so many samples, sound effects, pauses, bridges, and general spastic mouth frothing that their twenty minute debut album, Cult Pop Japan, easily…EASILY…crams more ideas in its fifteen tracks than many bands' entire careers. Comparisons have been made to John Zorn's Naked City, and they certainly share the same multi genre, chopped up aesthetic. But where Zorn took the cartoon music of Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott and grafted it to the hyper intensity of Napalm Death, Wienners dropped the metal and replaced it with Banana Splits super pop and borderline toxic doses of sugar. There's also Boredoms, of course, and Polysics in their freakier moments isn't a bad comparison either, but the whole thing is just so damned HAPPY that even those don't quite touch it. Individual tracks remain impossible to distinguish even after repeated plays, but with the help of CD track numbering, fragments start to emerge. "We Are The World" (no, not that one, at least I don't think so) sounds like the theme to a game show. A cheesy one. Speaking of which, "Love The Earth, Cosmo Attack" sees keyboardist Max (she's female) set her machine to maximum carnival cheese, and her signature "YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!" halfway through is as close to a "typical" Wienners moment as you're likely to get. "Japan Holi" kinda sounds like Yes (appropriate, since it's the album's epic at 2:15,) even featuring a placid Rick Wakeman moment before immediately plunging back into insanity. They also calm down...somewhat...for the relatively sane single "Idol," sounding merely nuts, instead of full blown psychotic. The amazing thing is that, as batshit crazy as it all is, it's not messy. No, Wienners are airtight, both in composition and performance, and their Vaudevillian slapstick is WAY too complex to allow for the slightest slip-up. Vocalist Tamaya is, unbelievably, also group's guitarist, and I swear, if he can duplicate those precise riffs on stage while also screaming his head off, it'll be proof positive he's not human. Japanese rock has a well deserved reputation for insanity, but it's never been mixed with strangely innocent pre-school goofiness in quite this way. Somebody must've slipped 'em a bunch of Twinkies. |