Search - Half Japanese :: Music to Strip By

One of the 4 best HALF JAPANESE LPs/CDs they ever did

Chris bct | San Diego, CA USA | 12/19/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I believe this is the CD version with bonus trax. These guys know how to make hits. They just will probably never be palatable to commercial radio. They did a hits 3xLP/2xCD and the liner notes guy said, "What hits?" Amongst us HJ fans, we can sure pick 'em out. And, to me, this album is one of the few I've ever heard where every song is a winner. Course, keep in mind that most folks likely would be put off either by his quirky vocals, heck, he talks most of the time, maybe a bit sing songy, but only rarely even sings on the songs.



This is not even close to bein' your regular rock or regular punk or hardcore. It's truely in its own catagory. Their musical approach is to not struggle to match each other as they play the song, meerly to be in the same general ball park through the song. I still can't tell if they just say, "Ok here's the general thing of this song, do whatchu wanna do and we'll see what it sounds like when we're done recording it." Of if this is very calculated and they map out that each instrument will sound this way for this song. Whatever they do their albums are always interesting and always have at least some good songs. However, this one is one of those very few albums where every single song is a joy to hear, bearing in mind the above provisos.



I'm just thankful they do not appear to give a hoot how commercial they are. I believe they're just like almost every punk band I've ever run across: they do it cuz they love it and let the chips fall where they may. It's possible that they release so many albums over the years that somebody in that band or even all of them may be able to pay their bills from bein' in the band. My guess is some or all of them have some kinda day job thing goin' like most punk bands do. I'm not sure what it means that they've released about a dozen albums and they're come out on maybe 8 different labels. My guess is that means they're not financially lucrative but that indie labels keep enjoying releasing their stuff cuz there's lots of such labels who, just like so many punk/indie bands, they do it for the love of it. The beauty of the Internet is you can take a little musical taste. If you haven't heard these guys, I highly recommend you do cuz yer likely to either find you really dig them or can't stand them. And if you do like 'em this is the album to get along with The Band Who Would Be King, Charmed Life and Sing No Evil. Course, you can't go wrong with the Greatest Hits 2xCD either. Yup. chrisbct@hotmail.com"