Issue 23 July 2007
Andersens - Gzi Gzi Gzeo (Switchico Records)
"After the success d'estime of Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Nagisa Ni Te, Japanese naif pop has experienced a significant upsurge in interest. Anyone from those far away isles with a few guitars, a brass section and wayward melodic nous is guaranteed an audience; all the better if the content can be index-linked to some abstract aesthetic or political motivators (Tori Kudo's embrace of the 'mystery of error' and his involvement with the A-Musik collective).
There's nothing particularly problematic about the notion as such beyond exposing the limitations of the Anglocentrism of the pop music underground and its collective listening populace. This isn't the place for an essay in Orientalism, yet there's an exoticisation within the discursive frameworks of Japanese music fandom that starts to seem a little queasily not quite right, a recourse to 'reception at the extremities': cutesy populism or noise blowout; holistic mysticism or Technicolor mayhem. Bands like the Boredoms play on expectations and that self-awareness both exempts and problematises: many other groups seem to fall foul of a well-meaning but ultimately condescending tokenism.
Andersens write good, solid, at times jocular pop songs coated with brass and woodwind, and thus they're likely to suffer a similar fate. This is a shame not so much because they're unlike their peers - you can draw a line of influence Andersens and Maher, Nagisa, etc - but rather, because the lightness of approach they bring to the pop song risks being lost in the discursive fray.
Gzi Gzi Gzeo is Andersens' second full-length. It's worth noting that sometimes their aims outstrip their capabilities and their songs can be left feeling a little frail. It's great that they clutch for something greater than the sum of their parts, but there's a lesson in here about exploiting one's limitations. That said, when the multi-limbed group lock into an exemplary pop fantasia, their songs possess a gentle ambition at odds with the submerged egotism of much modern independent music (Arcade Fire, anyone?). Notably, Andersens work best when they're playing quietly, approaching song from a less-is-more basis; and when their female singer leads the troupe. Her delivery sits comfortably within these bittersweet frameworks, whereas other vocalists obsess too much over the roughened grain of their voice.
'Margaret', the final song here, is the greatest success - it is highly poised, almost regal, with each chord placed as though following the breaths of the guitarists. The brass band moves woozily through a seven-note melody head that they never quite pin down, which isn't so much shaky playing as sidereal colouring-in of the song's contours. Gzi Gzi Gzeo's achievement is, paradoxically, its ability to admit failure as one of its aesthetics, but not to gloat in the space opened by this shift in focus. Rather, Andersens are slyly ambitious, hooking into pop's capability to 'make strange' the simplest span of hands on guitar, the hiss of breath through brass."
- Jon Dale
