Flashes of Lightbulbs from Fujiya & Miyagi
Sprinkles of greatness and mediocrity litter Fujiya & Miyagi’s third full length.
Fujiya & Miyagi
Lightbulbs
Released on Sep 09, 2008
When a musical entity calls itself Fujiya & Miyagi, one might expect it to be a duo from Japan, perhaps playing folk or crafting chiptunes into chaos better than Crystal Castles. So one might be surprised to learn, as I was, that Fujiya & Miyagi is currently a four-piece from Brighton, England who meld simple synthesizers, hushed vocals and basic beats into three-minute pop songs. The bio on the band’s pimped-out MySpace page makes it sound like the group is the United Kingdom’s greatest musical offering since The Beatles, but repeated listens to Fujiya & Miyagi’s third long-player Lightbulbs expose the hype for what it is and bring the band back down to size.
The first track off Lightbulbs, “Knickerbocker,” rightly reigns as the band’s most downloaded song on iTunes (as of 9/17/08) and currently streams on the band’s MySpace. David Best’s hushed, airy vocals are spoken in a rhythm more than they are sung in a melody, so it’s up to the synths to add musicality to a song about “vanilla strawberry knickerbocker glory,” name-dropping and other nonsense. Searching for a word to rhyme with “glory,” Best chooses “Zavaroni,” referring to Lena, a Scottish-born child star and media personality who died of complications of anorexia in the late 90’s. Thankfully, weird and wavering synths make the reference to Zavaroni’s ghost work well.
“Uh” is nowhere near vulgar, but it’s hardly safe for work either. Best sings “She made me go uh uh UH…UH…AH-AH,” with the uh’s sounding like musical gyrations or ejaculations. Paired with lyrics about being “as prickly as a couple of porcupines,” the song starts to sound like an X-rated serenade from Jemaine of Flight of the Conchords. There’s a bit of funk in the break of “Uh” and “Pickpocket” has some intriguing vocal delivery, but both songs are lyrically juvenile and musically bland enough to warrant the skip button. The high-pitched, soaring synths on “Goosebumps” set a somber mood with Ringo Starr-style snare rolls dribbling in the background, but Fujiya & Miyagi pull out just short of the four-minute mark, fading the song when it should have been built up. The beat on the fourth track “Rook to Queen’s Pawn Six” sounded like Of Montreal’s “Gronlandic Edit.”
“Sore Thumb” was thus a welcome wake-up from an otherwise sleepy start to Fujiya & Miyagi’s CD. Drums, bass and vocals bounce Best’s words across a bumpy rhythm while synths slip from sheets of sound into the blips and tweaks of a robotic groove. Just seven seconds past the three-minute mark, though, the band pulls the plug on one of the best tracks of the album. Two more relatively sleepy tracks are “Dishwasher” and “Pterodactyls,” the former with a busy beat of claps and slaps and the latter with more oh-ah-ah-oh-ah-ah-oh-ah’s. The synths on “Pussyfooting” string along a serious groove, but the lyrics are so repetitive they spoil any serious consideration. When the album’s title track spends one minute and ten seconds predicting “today is the same as yesterday” and “tomorrow will be the same as today,” you begin to wonder if the same isn’t true for the songs as they relate to one another and to the album as a whole. Thankfully, the instrumental “Hundreds & Thousands” closes out the album as one of its most interesting tracks.
Fujiya & Miyagi’s third full-length Lightbulbs offers a few great licks, a handful of mediocre tracks and a couple of bombs, but it’s worth a listen. We’ve heard everything from Britney Spears’ bubble gum pop to the grunge pop of Nickelback; Fujiya & Miyagi makes saltine cracker and ginger ale pop. A little flavor, a little fizz, but it’s easy on the stomach. It won’t blow your mind or give you a headache, but it will make you bob your head and may even keep your attention. Even if it doesn’t, the next day, after you’ve forgotten Fujiya & Miyagi altogether, the phrase “no more pussyfooting” might pop into your consciousness. It’s anyone’s guess what that means, and how long it will last, if at all.
High Point
The head-bobbing rhythm and squeaks of synth on “Sore Thumb” and the layers of melody on the instrumental “Hundreds & Thousands.”
Low Point
The juvenile lyrics in “Pickpocket” and “Pussyfooting” make the stripped-down pop band even harder to take seriously.
Posted by Ben Wadington on Sep 19, 2008 @ 7:00 am