Fujiya & Miyagi Lightbulbs by: Dan Osmolowski Mon:27-Oct-08 Label: Deaf Dumb & Blind Year: 2008 WB rating 55 out of 100

For most of us, what piqued our interest in a particular piece of music at a formative age was melody. Words often appear a distant third to melody and rhythm when it comes to identifying with a piece of music as a teenager. Working with 13 to 17 year olds every day makes you realize that they are much more forgiving when it comes to appalling lyricism. Just check any popular music chart for proof that only a small percentage of the songwriters have read more than two books in their entire life. Popular music grafts off this theory and suggests that the most successful songs work, not because they intelligently explore the human condition but, because they embed their main tune in your subconscious and cause you to repeat it ad-nauseum until you are driven to purchase the song or, alternately, feel compelled to jam bamboo shoots under the fingernails of the songwriter who composed it.

As a young man I remember being thrilled by the likes of my father’s AC/DC and Australian Crawl records. With Scott and Young et. al. it was the guttural rhythm and anthemic choruses and, for the Mornington Penninusla’s bunch of surf rockers, it was the melody and pop hooks that ran through the breadth of their brief career. At the time, I was too young to decipher Bon Scott’s overtly sexualized lyrics and who the fuck knew what James Reyne was signing about? The point is, to a young man it was all about the guitars and drums – the exhilaration that they produced. I didn’t care that Scott was waxing lyrical about the size of his testicles or that Reyne was informing us he knew a hoochie, Gucci, fiorucci mama.

All of that changed as I began to gravitate toward the work of Gordon Sumner and Roger Waters, particularly Sting’s 1985 debut solo outing, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. ‘Russians’ and ‘We Work The Black Seam’ made an indelible impression on me because it seemed that the lyrics, the narrative, were the first thing I noticed about each track. Whilst it helped that both of these songs were blessed with beautiful melodies, I desperately wanted to know what Sumner was on about. Similarly, with Water’s take on the ills of war and the ‘modern’ condition on Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut (a solo release for all intents and purposes) I was immediately intrigued by his word play and inspired to inquisition by his polemics.

For Fujiya & Miyagi, however, it is all about the rhythm. With their earlier work, vocalist David Best has even admitted to being afraid of melody. As for lyricism, don’t even go there. Most of Best’s musings come across as stream of consciousness at best and, at their worst, like pure gobbledygook. This is purely subjective of course. Perhaps other listeners may be able to glean some deep, obscured meaning to lines like, “If I could swim with my walkman on/then I would swim with it on/synchronised swimmers spell out your name with horizontal diagonal shapes,” (‘Pterydactyls’) or “Uppercase and underline/we are prickly as a couple of porcupines/I’m putting out fires all over the place/pick a letter lower down the alphabet/oh, she make me go, uh, uh, uh” (the imaginatively titled, ‘Uh’). Now this may seem like a criticism and a reason to devalue the artistic worth of the album and, if you demand an intellectually stimulating lyrical journey from your indie album, it is. However, if you are someone (like me) that loves a bit of Timbaland and Timberlake alongside your Dylan and Decemberists, it’s not so much a condemnation but a warning.

Undoubtedly, these songs are about something or, at least, inspired by something. Everything is. But the songs on this Brighton band’s second album are not about anything that will connect with a wider audience, nor inspire them to want to find out what the hell they are about. Instead, these songs are all about promoting groove and grind. Things start positively enough on Lightbulbs; even if ‘Knickerbocker’ closely apes the opening track on 2005’s Transparent Things, ‘Ankle Injuries’. Replace the chanted “Fujiya/Miyagi” on the latter with “Vanilla/strawberry/knickerbocker glory” on ‘Knickerbocker’ and you essentially have the same ‘motorik’-inspired track. The roller-rink organ is appealing, however, and there is the ghost of a melody that rises just prior to the chorus that point to some prevailing, and positive, pop influences.

Lightbulbs is a great ‘sounding’ album. The production is clean and pulsating and kudos goes to any recording that posits the bass guitar as a lead instrument. The addition of live drums pays dividends on ‘Pterydactyls’ with some funky Motown playing, breaking down into one of the grooviest bass lines heard in some time. The squelching synths and stabbing horns of the song’s middle section point firmly in the direction that F & M need to explore in order to remain relevant and vital. Elsewhere, the tedium is often suffocating. The band sound like they are on autopilot and the controls definitely aren’t set for the heart of the sun. The ‘ballad’ moments like ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Light Bulbs’ are uninspiring and seem purely obligatory. ‘Rook to Queen’s Pawn Six’ could be a demo version of the Transparent Things hit, ‘Collarbone’. And ‘Sore Thumb’ and ‘Pussyfooting’ sound like the band are playing cover versions of their own songs. The aforementioned ‘Knickerbocker’ and ‘Pterydactyls’ are the only real standouts on an album that sounds ‘samey’ on first listen and subsequent listens only confirm the sneaking suspicion that Fujiya & Miyagi are a one trick band.

When they broke courtesy of some blog buzz surrounding the insanely catchy ‘Collarbone’ and a positive spin from Pitchforkmedia.com there was a sense of something new about the band. Even though they wore their influences on their sleeve (Neu!, in particular) there was a vibrancy and playfulness about them. Similar to what fellow Brighton residents, The Go! Team, brought with their 2004 debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike – they sounded like they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Unfortunately, like their compatriots, album number two has only thrown up much of the same and the original luster has faded to a plea for something different in its place. Those new directions are only hinted at on Lightbulbs and, if you are new to the band, it’s simply not enough to warrant going any further than their debut, Transparent Things.