Half Japanese - We Are They Who Ache With Amorous Love
At the end of the day, it never matters much to me how conventional or unconventional a band is. I mean, you can hate Steely Dan's Aja, but go watch Behind The Scenes for that album's recording and you'd be blown away at the Kubrickian lengths Fagen and Becker would go to to achieve perfection. On the opposite side of the spectrum, The Residents have been recording music even before they knew how to pluck stringed instruments in the 1960's. That's something to be admired, and being completely outside the box has its own appeal.
All that taken into consideration, Half Japanese are fun because they're completely and utterly irreverent. They don't fit comfortably into any particular experimental niche and transcend time and space through the sheer force of their individuality. I wouldn't be surprised if Jad Fair or somebody else ran across a live rip of Cromagnon's Orgasm some Les Rallizes Dénudés concert as elementary school students and thought "**** this sounds great but its too long" and went from there. And the more lo-fi they get ('Gloria', for instance) the more their charm shines through.
8 out of 10.
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