It’s a little more than a month since I picked up the best album of 2006, Asobi Seksu’s Citrus. This is a dazzling record in my humble opinion and I’m more than a little surprised that it hasn’t been mentioned elsewhere on the pages of my musically sagacious comrades of the boggersphere.

Asobi Seksu are a four piece New York shoegaze pop outfit and Citrus is their sophomore album. The group hinges on the axis of Yuki Chikudate’s keyboard and vocal talents and James Hanna’s enthralling guitar. All the members count themselves New Yorkers, however Yuki spent a childhood in California and is second generation Japanese.





If you can’t feel the synaesthetic warmth immediately from the red and orange album cover, then you’ll surely get your sensory wires crossed when Hanna’s guitar starts humming along to Yuki’s angelic vocals. In a reversal of their original MO Yuki is very much the vocal lead, but Hanna does chip in with some more than useful contributions also. With the synth thrown into the mix your brain can’t help but float awash in the same warm coloured beatific glow.

Yuki sings sometimes in Japense, sometimes in English and her vocal instrument is never far from the fulcrum of each track. As with all records possessing the holy grail of longevity this 12 track album has a rewarding cadence. The ordering and tempo of the songs betrays a fundamental crafting of the album to provide more than a simple collection of tracks.

The Intro and Strawberries build nicely before the album takes off at full speed, like a raucous convertible on a sweet summery evening. From then, there are maybe two instances when the rev counter lulls dreamily out of the red, just long enough to catch your breath. There is no filler here. Everyone will have to pick their high point, it's a difficult task. In particular, I reach for the repeat button on Pink Cloud Tracing Paper.

It’s refreshing to see a contemporary band flying the shoegaze flag full mast. The prospect of all those top order interview questions and reviews laced with the inevitable elephantine comparisons to the colossuses of the genre from the late 80s and early 90s must surely put some aspiring acts off. As Hanna said recently in an interview “I think writers are having a contest on Citrus to see who can name drop the more obscure dream pop band.”

While Soffia Coppola may well lament that whatever Kevin Shields Lost In Translation might have been easily found by Yuki and Asobi Seksu, this band display enough sharp pop acumen to keep their heads well above water in the spate of cumbersomely written but ultimately kind critiques. Their greatest success is spiking the searing distortion which is the shoegaze signature sound with pop immediacy.



Asobi Seksu - Thursday



Asobi Seksu, that’s Japanese for Playful Sex. Go and get some, now.


tags: music, asobi seksu

Published by Paul.