Dorks And Losers

Dream pop is meant to evoke a cer­tain kind of emo­tion and thought when lis­tened to. Asobi Seksu (Japan­ese for “play­ful sex”) takes it a step fur­ther by cre­at­ing another plane of enchant­ment in Cit­rus by hav­ing lead vocal­ist Yuki Chiku­date inter­sperse Japan­ese with her Eng­lish lyrics. This effect cre­ates an often sen­sual and play­ful atmosphere.

I’m cheat­ing by using an adjec­tive that comes directly from the band’s name, but I couldn’t think of a word that bet­ter describes the music. This is espe­cially true in both “New Years,” with its extreme upbeat­ed­ness (I don’t even think that’s a word), as well as the more laid-back “Straw­ber­ries,” with its ini­tial casualness.

Asobi is able to main­tain a mature sound, despite a brush of teenage angst and a touch of child­ish inno­cence. You can sense the youth­ful rebel­lious­ness in “Strings,” while also feel­ing the adult restraint through the fre­quent tempo changes.

Is it con­fused inde­ci­sion or just the usual grow­ing pains?

The biggest influ­ence I can hear on Asobi (“Thurs­day” and “Good­bye”) is The Cran­ber­ries. There are sim­i­lar­i­ties between Yuki’s voice and Cran­ber­ries vocal­ist Dolores O’Riordan, and both bands seem to strive for the same gen­eral mood.

There’s a double-edged sword to Yuki’s smooth and tran­quil voice. Some­times I can’t under­stand a word she’s singing. To a point, it wouldn’t mat­ter because the sound of her voice goes beau­ti­fully with the album’s rhythm. But there were lots of times that I didn’t know she was even singing in Eng­lish. Her voice is so soft that I couldn’t detect the lan­guage, and thought she was still singing in Japanese.

Asobi Seksu can also sort of rock out (“Pink Cloud Trac­ing Paper”) and even ser­e­nade (“Exotic Ani­mal Par­adise”), every once in a while. The biggest dis­a­point­ments were the slower tracks like “Exotic Ani­mal Par­adise” and “Lions And Tigers.” But even these slight devi­a­tions are greatly wel­comed doses of real­ity, after what some­times feels like an end­less trance-like state.

Cit­rus is a fine album, but at times seems tire­some through the occa­sional bouts of lan­guage inter­pre­ta­tions and infre­quent styl­is­tic variations.

[photo via Daily North­west­ern]

[photo via Force Field]
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Track list:

1. Every­thing Is On
2. Straw­ber­ries
3. New Years
4. Thurs­day
5. Strings
6. Pink Cloud Trac­ing Paper
7. Red Sea
8. Good­bye
9. Lions And Tigers
10. Nefi + Girly
11. Exotic Ani­mal Parade
12. Mizu Asobi

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