Japanther - Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt (Menlo Park)
2/5
By: Alex Hibbert
BUY DOWNLOADNoise emitting from Brooklyn at the minute mostly seems laboured in the loves of the past; take the Nu-gaze musings of Crystal Stilt's three minute pop gems, channelling the pedal -seeped visions of their heroes into something original, yet different. Much like Vivian Girls or School Of Seven Bells there's tidal waves of sound coming from the eastern shore, drenched in the landscape of echo endorsed by America's finest fathers and our island's grungy delinquents. It's funny then, that in all of NY's output, including some fine glitch-pop from the likes of Kotchy or A-Trak, Japanther's Tut, Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt actually resides in the underground clubs or attic retreats of a more abstruse Big Apple. Merging together two almost paradoxical movements into their second album, it's this ambition which leads to Tut, Tut's failure. The raw, angry nature of punk's protests were borne through the persuasion that Prog's theatrics were wearing suitably thin, and instead of stifling the creativity of a generation it was this collision that gave birth to it, but in Tut, Tut... the genres meet to form an ungainly whole.
Actually Japanther are culpable mainly by association; the short bursts of pop punk in which Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly take the fore are, on the whole, great. 'Bumpin Rap Tapes' actually had me convinced that I'd heard it before, resplendent behind a flurry of dancing silhouettes, and the three chord simplicity of Japanther's cover of Portland's New Bad Things' 'The Dirge' ditches the discontent and raises the bpm, mutating the original's form into an altogether more alluring beast. The first line we actually hear on Tut, Tut... is the band singing "Someday, you'll be dead and gone but this won't be over, so let's build something strong, something that will last" down their modified telephone receivers, but if an existential cry for posthumous remembrance is the target set, then it's Penny Rimbaud's inclusion which quashes it.
Billed as executive producer, Rimbaud, of anarcho-punks Crass fame, actually should have stayed behind the desk. Instead he's enlisted to recite his poetry, spoken word pieces in which the delivery evokes memories of Jonathan Harris in 'Lost In space' and aren't dissimilar in form to the booklet of poetry he penned and subsequently included in Crass' Christ - The Album. Japanther shrink to the background; a barely discernible clatter of snare and dreamlike keys as Rimbaud's monologue's venture forwards on two long, long tracks here. As well as that Japanther bookend the album with two short bursts of Rimbaud (not a euphemism, though it would surely be something illegal in most countries) and his unedifying gas. It's funny then, considering only 'I The Indigene' and 'Africa Seems So Far Away' really give Rimbaud a platform, that it becomes so crucial to the album's whole. Running at just over thirty five minutes, Rimbaud's excursions actually dominate the running time here, clocking in at twenty two minutes, and the vacillatory nature of his work ranges from gangling diatribe to awkward absurdity - see "I am the sphincter, I am the sphinx."
Mostly these two forms are kept separate, but 'Bloated Corpse' actually does amalgamate the two, bookended as it is by poetical foray. But where the first find's dialogue duties taken by Reilly: "Christ these corpses are bloated," murmured disconcertingly, hypnotically, the concluding piece is another Rimbaud nightmarish vision. Japanther stalk behind with the same intention, menacing, but ultimately banal, whereas the middle section is actually the bands punk realisations proper; a sixty second blast of doo-wop brilliance that's again underpinned by Vanek's wall of sound rhythm, and Japanther's insistence on brevity. It's indicative of the album's complete form; musical ambition, though not revolutionary, much more compelling than the almost self indulgent musings of Rimbaud.
Artists in this article: Japanther
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