The Answer Is In The Beat

Half Japanese: Volume One: 1981-1985 3LP (Fire Records, 2014)

May 12, 2014 at 5:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

A few years ago, Fire Records announced that they’d be reissuing the entire Half Japanese discography, which made me super excited, but it seems like the albums are only being released as limited Record Store Day box sets. At least for now. I absolutely had to buy the 1/2 Gentlemen / Not Beasts 4LP reissue last year, I’d wanted to own that album since I was in high school, and that one didn’t disappoint at all. So now we have a limited box of their next 3 albums, tracing their evolution from being just the duo of Jad and David Fair, to a touring band with a revolving lineup of members. Loud (from 1981) is their first album with an expanded lineup, and is every bit as bracing and raw as its predecessor, but with a much more expanded range of sounds (notably plenty of squonking saxophones). There’s some particularly brutal anti-school numbers on here (“Dumb Animals” and “High School Tonight”, yeowch), and probably my favorite HJ song, the flawless fucked-up love-anxiety song “I Know How It Feels… Bad”. I kind of wish this box included the Horrible 12″, as Drag City’s CD reissue did a few years back, just because it would be nice to have “Rosemary’s Baby” on vinyl. Maybe some of the future reissues/releases can compile tracks from EP’s and 7″s and whatnot.

Jumping ahead to 1984, we have Our Solar System, which I’d never actually heard before, I missed out on Drag City’s CD reissue of this one, but I had the other ones they put out. This one continues to increase the musicality, with straighter rhythms, a little less distortion (but still plenty noisy, lo-fi, and chaotic), a few more warped covers (Buddy Holly, Roky Erickson, “Louie Louie”, VU), and one of their best monster songs (they’ve claimed all their songs are either love songs or monster songs), “Thing With A Hook”. It’s still very primitive and caveman-like, but there’s a couple songs where it has more of a joyous frat party singalong feel to it, rather than just a bunch of angsty kids bashing away at their instruments in their bedroom.

Then we come to 1985’s Sing No Evil, which streamlines their sound like never before, only featuring a dozen tracks, as opposed to a dozen or so per side. “Firecracker Firecracker” is easily one of their signature tunes, bringing their sound closer to Violent Femmes, with a walking bassline, straightforward rhythm, layers of honking horns, multiple drummers, and clearly upfront, heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The rest of the album is a similar mix of fairly concise 2-4 minute songs, mostly love-themed but with some evil and voodoo songs as well. But this album definitely seems to introduce Jad Fair’s more (relatively) polished songwriting and singing style, which is still pretty freeform and wide-eyed/naive. If we have to wait until next year’s Record Store Day for volume 2 of this series, that means in a year we’ll be treated to vinyl reissues of 3 of the band’s most well known, tuneful, and overall accomplished works, the albums they released on their revamped 50 Skidillion Watts label: Music To Strip By, Charmed Life, and The Band That Would Be King. The bonus download card that comes with this vinyl box mentions that if you collect all 4 volumes, you get a bonus, and I’m totally going to buy all of them, even if it takes several more years.