Ack Phhht!

Change E.P.

I’ve written before about Swinging Popsicle, one of my favorite Japanese indie rock bands. The first thing I ever bought from them was the Change EP, and it’s still one of my favorites (my other fave is last year’s great Go on). Released in 2001, the band had already been around for a few years and had refined their songwriting somewhat, but still possessed a rawer, live sound that is a bit surprising compared to the more polished studio work they do today.

Lead-off track “Change” is a wonderful piece of noisy guitar pop, played at a frantic, almost punky pace. The next track, “Juliana”, alternates between minor-key acoustic verses and a pounding chorus. My favorite is track three, “Outerspace”, which marries distorted shoegazer guitars to a more traditional pop song structure. Mineko Fujishima’s vocals can be thin, but here it works in the song’s favor, offering a sweet counterpart to the charging, overamped guitar. The EP closes with “Falldown”, a nice mid-tempo ballad, slowing things down after the fast pace of the first three tracks.

“Juliana” and “Outerspace” are both streaming from their MySpace page, and you can buy the tracks from JapanFiles (I’ve also seen listings for an import CD that combines this single with the 60’s soul inspired “Orange”/”Toi” single – also available on JapanFiles – and two other songs I don’t know).