Goddamn you Japanese girls! You’re so cute with your matching baby doll outfits, your pink and blue electric guitars, your large smiles and your polite ways to thank everyone.
I don’t know if you like being called cute, since you play some mix of power pop and Ramones-inspired-punk (and punk is not really supposed to be ‘cute’) but everything you do and say is so damn adorable.
I actually had a false preconceived idea of Shonen Knife; looking at the pictures, I thought they were a young Japanese all-female band, some incarnation of one of Rivers Cuomo’s best wet dreams, but the band has actually been around for 30 years in one form or another, with 17 albums under the belt, like real veterans. Back in the days, they even toured with Kurt Cobain who said seeing them live turned him ‘into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert’.
But Shonen Knife are like some Japanese punk-ish Go-Gos who would have refused to grow up: even if Naoko Yamano (on guitar and vocals) is the only original member left from the band which was formed in 1981, you would not tell she is much older than the new additions, Ritsuko Taneda (on bass and vocals) and Emi Morimoto (on drums and vocals).
They all seem coming straight from a Japanese Cartoon, like three black-wristbanded-Powerpuff Girls, synchronized to the perfection for each of their guitar riffs and bouncing moves.
There is a complete innocence in their music and the way they perform, it almost looks childish (when performing at Amoeba last night, they came on stage simultaneously brandishing some Japanese towels with their logo), and if their fun and energetic music borrows to punk, it is bubblegum punk, with lyrics written in colorful glitter paints.
Unfortunately, I did not get much of the lyrics of their short and catchy songs, and I don’t think it really matters, although I read they are funny and mostly about food and animals. Naoko explained the title of one of the song ‘Capybara’, which is yes, about, that big rodent from South America, ‘A big rat’ said someone in the crowd, ‘No, big mouse’ the three girls replied! Yes, a mouse is certainly much cutter than a rat.
Curiously, the song that rocked the hardest was a punk rock treatment of the Carpenters’ song ‘Top of the world’. Naoko, who seemed to be the only one really fluent in English, said that we may not know Shonen Knife and their new album ‘Free Time’, so it was time for something everybody would recognize. Charming thought.
She also advertised their show at Spaceland the same night, ‘it’s at 11pm, so it’s a little late, but we can… rocking’ she declared with that constant smile stuck on her face since the beginning.
I’m pretty sure they played that bright-saccharinated-Ramones-que tune ‘Perfect freedom’ that would make everybody jumping around. It’s punk with no dark side, as if Sleater-Kinney had focused on fun and carefree optimism.