Asobi Seksu Reviewed
Asobi Seksu
Citrus
(Friendly Fire)
Japan, colorful as the media make it out to be, can be a pretty fucked-up place. That’s why you have to begrudgingly accept the name Asobi Seksu. It roughly means “playful sex”; there’s nothing sexy about them.
Citrus, however, is a startlingly appropo album title for this orange prism of an album, fittingly shrouded in a hued jewel case. But what’s so unsexy about Asobi Seksu is their bread and butter: sprite early-’90s British pop. The acre-wide scope of “Thursday” hovers slightly below Yuki’s helium-lite vocals. “Pink Cloud Tracing Paper” — the song titles are even better than the album’s — basks in the glow of Yo La Tengo’s Painful while “Goodbye” constructs Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound without him there to take credit. Maybe not playful sex, how about “fucking playful”?
— Steve Forstneger
Appearing: September 22nd at Schubas in Chicago.
