POP TATARI

Really great, and really noisy. If the idea of Japanese people screaming their heads off sounds unpleasant to you, turn back now, but if you're into that sort of thing you'd be hard pressed to do better than the Boredoms. What makes this album fascinating is the way the band jackknifes from one genre of music to another at seemingly inhuman speeds. Once you get past their demented vocals and nonsense gibbering, their musicianship is actually very impressive. Making those kind of rapid fire changes is not easy, although it's unclear how much is the result of studio manipulation rather than the performance itself.

Like an overworked pinball machine, the music on Pop Tatari pings from punk, to metal, to surf, to psychedelia before you have time to catch your breath. The only place it slows down a bit is toward the end, when they settle on a sludgy psychedelic guitar riff and stay there for more than a few seconds. I understand that their later albums drift further and further towards that style, but here youthful exuberance still abounds. "Heeba" is a very loose cover of the old lounge standard "Fever" which is recognizable here only because of its distinctive bass line and tortured Engrish of the title. As if things weren't schizophrenic enough already, the title track collects snippets from all the other songs on the album and mashes them together in a surreal collage (Gentle Giant did the same thing on "In A Glass House" but here it's far more jarring.)

The Boredoms are an acquired taste and not for everyone (not for anyone, practically) but I love them and if you are adventurous and open minded, maybe you'll love them too.