Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits
2025-01-23
It turns out that punk was not dead after all, it just went to Japan.
I only just discovered Otokobe Beaver but holy fuck am I glad I did. I watched less than one minute of their Tiny Desk concert before I was absolutely sold on this delightful, noisy, wonky, frantic, ferocious madness. It immediately reminded me of the amazing all-girl avant-garde post-punk band eX-Girl that I had the pleasure of of being introduced to back in 2001 and I have been going back to every time I needed a good dose of odd, energetic, quirky, Japanese craziness. Not that there is any mistaking the two, far from it, they just sort of lit up the same pleasure centers in my brain. (If that makes any sense.)
Itekoma Hits is Otoboke Beaver’s first full length studio album from 2019 and despite its relatively modest length of around 26 minutes it is filled to the brim with fast, furious and chaotic punk delivered with surgical precision by the four band members that somehow manage to perform ridiculously intense and complex songs in terms of structure and tempo changes while simultaneously making it all sound pretty relaxed and effortless, but make no mistake—these girls are all virtuosos on their respective instruments and their coordination is phenomenal. The fact that they do a lot of group singing/shouting/screaming does not hurt either.
Listen
- Don’t light my fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkWfFXnLpYg
- What do you mean you have talk to me at this late date?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nAgpZIlUg