One of the world’s most populous cities and certainly among the most interesting, Tokyo is a place where there is never a lack of worthwhile things to do, and that includes musical options in the countless “live houses,” or concert bars, peppered across the municipal map. Japanese musicians and fans have long demonstrated a thirst for sounds from abroad, and an informed respect as well, so quality rock, reggae, jazz, and much more can be found easily enough. For the foreign visitor, the distinctively domestic creations and interpretations are the most interesting. While tickets aren’t cheap, the online reservation system is practical (and honourably devoid of treacherous supplementary fees), sound quality is taken seriously, early start times much appreciated, and the sheer energy of the local audiences astounding. Below are a quartet of musical events from early spring that PANM360 is pleased to report back on.
It’s almost three decades now that Japan’s purveyors of “technicolor pogo punk” have been dishing out their mix of raucous garage rock and retro electronics (they’re named in honour of a Korg synthesizer). You wouldn’t know it, though, from the set Polysics banged out at the rather plain, mid-sized venue Fever, a bit off the beaten path in what’s currently Tokyo’s preeminent hipster neighbourhood, Shimokitazawa. The band is known from a severly elevated energy level on stage, and when that stage is in a part of town they clearly cherish and play in frequently, they’re pretty hard to beat in that respect.
Clad in their yellow jumpsuits and censor-bar sunglasses, the debt that founder and frontman Hiroyuki Hayashi and company owe to Devo is enormous, and they aren’t reticent about it. They’ve been covering, quoting, even collaborating with Devo throughout the years, though they’ll certainly acknowledge inspiration from P-Model (Susumu Hirasawa’s early new-wave band) and of course Yellow magic Orchestra, still venerated throughout Japan.
The opening acts were frustrating—the generic college-kid indie rock of Peanut Butters was utterly forgettable and Helsinki Lambda Club’s retro inflections (mild funk and psych flavours) not much more engaging. Polysics made up for all that with a powerhouse set, peppered with rapid-fire banter from Hayashi while bassist Fumi just seemed to delight in his motormouthed foolishness. While their last record (of dozens) came out five years ago, here’s hoping that Polysics find a reason to tour internationally again, and soon.
