Ah yes, love.
13 years after Half Japanese’s last album, the punk band so beloved by all right thinking people, playing children’s instruments as though they were Y-Pants and untuned and off tune singing as though they were Shaggs are now 60 year old lead singer Jad Fair and are now back again on Overjoyed playing off-kilter pop punk, a sort of Jonathan Richman childlikeness but not really.
Imagine Lou Reed being an insanely in love teenager and writing songs… well, you can’t imagine anyone but Jad Fair writing these so decentralized it is a little hard to grasp songs, but you see what I mean. OK, I got it, think of the Lou Reed of “New York Conversation”. That’s what you get on the over the moon, way, way, way overboard love songs that populate Half japanese’s terrific new album Overjoyed.
These are off tune tracks which are not quite good songs, and you can’t quite imagine somebody actually covering them,, maybe I mean they are innocent songs of intense and extreme love. Jad is jumping for joy on track after track and you just think if he had collaborated with someone, these songs would be too much: they are so heartfelt you are stuck wondering what to do now.
On the obtuse rockabilly “Overjoyed And Joyful “ he enthuses “Overjoyed by the love we’re forming true love we’re adorning” and on “Brave Enough” he sings (well speak sings) “Throw passion to the air, brave enough to say I care, brave enough to say let’s share”. And on the albums centerpiece “Our Love” he raves “Pretty good, pretty great, two thumbs up, first rate”. On another song “A and B and CD, all the angels do agree, me for you nd you for me”.
Over twelve songs, and 40 minutes, Jad repeats and repeats one idea until it becomes a mantra for the entire world: romantic love is real. And for a 60 year old there is also a word not in that sentence: “finally”. Yet there is something about the extremeness of it that feels maybe desperate? Maybe too much? I doubt his sincerity but I don’t quite know why.
The band themselves are a little at odds with the songs, you expect this to be very very sweet sounding, but it is barbed pro-punk howl and bowl over, from the opening guitar solo on “In The Pull” to the Velvet Underground meets the Stones rumble of “As Good As Good Can Be” . A little out there, it takes a couple of spins, but, like the search for true love, with any luck you get there eventually.
Grade: B+
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