Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman (1996)
If you take hip-hop, rock and roll, and Yé-yé (60s French pop), blend it together and serve it fresh, what would it taste-- er, sound like? The answer is the delicious smoothie known as Shibuya-Kei, a genre that lends its name to the Shibuya ward: Tokyo's main shopping district. The music of the genre perfectly captures the cultural richness, hip fashion styles, and attractive nightlife of this area.
I have wanted to share a Shibuya-Kei album here for a while, and I think Viva! La Woman is a good fit, as its one of the most popular albums to come out of the genre, at least in the U.S. Band members Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori conceived this album while living in Greenwich Village. In the liner notes, Hatori is credited for "singing, howling, moaning, sighing, thigh tapping" and Honda for "programming, keyboards, beach guitar, coughs". Most of the song titles and much of the lyrical content on this album are centered around food. The band name itself, "Cibo Matto" is Italian for "crazy food". This album opened up a whole other layer of satisfaction and appreciation from me when I read the lyrics (it's kind of hard to understand their broken english sometimes) so I would recommend doing that, but it's not necessarily vital to the enjoyment of this album.
Cibo Matto would go on to release two more albums, inducting Sean Lennon as a member for their 1999 album, and going on hiatus for a decade before reuniting and releasing their final LP to date in 2011. Out of the three, I think Viva! La Woman is my favorite, and I hope you all enjoy it as well.
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Where do I even start with this album. There are so many good things from the instrumentation and the mixture of different sounds to the vocals and the overall consistency of the record. I liked that I didn't know what to expect for each upcoming track, it made listening to the album more exciting. And I can tell how talented and creative the two women are.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could understand what they were saying without having to look up the lyrics, but I agree with you it isn't necessary in order to enjoy listening to the album. The intricacies of the instrumentation is what I enjoyed the most. It's so different track to track, and normally I'm not a fan of albums that lose that cohesiveness when there are so many sounds but it works really well here.
Overall, it's a fun record to listen to. It has a quirky vibe and I enjoyed almost all the tracks. Le Pain Perdu and Apple are my favorites. Thanks so much for introducing this to me, I'm excited to check out the rest of their work!
Boy oh boy do I love Cibo Matto, and Viva La Woman is damn near perfect. This album is such a strong mix of bombastic quirky tracks and slow sexy jams. As you also mentioned, there is a blending of genres that seems totally unique to Cibo Matto. I mean there could be other bands that combine hip hop, various international pop styles, dream pop on occasion, and whatever the style is called that The Go! Team is known for, but I've never heard of one.
ReplyDeleteBefore I gush about this band more, I feel like I ought to find at least one criticism. While not really a hold-back for me, I don't think Hatori and Honda are great singers or harmonizers. Even though it's the track that got me into that band, Birthday Cake might be the best example of this.
So anyway, this album is a joy to listen to. It has so much going on even between individual tracks without feeling like a mess of musical themes. This is best displayed between the tracks Beef Jerky and Sugar Water. One feels like the precursor to early 2000s dance pop and is effortlessly followed up with the most pleasant and broadly aimed track on the album.
Speaking of themes: FOOD. Everyone loves food. Cibo Matto gets that. No one could be truly mad at this album because hey, even if you only listen to Norwegian black metal, you still like food. And, after listening to this album, even a lowly vegetarian like me can know his chicken.
This album was a fantastic listen. It was so quirky and weird I don't even know where to start. I loved all the different samples and different things going on during each track, and despite all the noise, the music rarely, if ever sounded like a mess. It was beautiful organized chaos, and I think this is an album I'm going to keep coming back to in the future. I've only listened to the album a handful of times, but I think this is going to be one of those albums you will find something new every time you listened to it.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to keep looking into more bands in this genre because I've never even heard of Shibuya-Kei until you posted this album. This album also made me hungry so if you excuse me I'm going to have to go get some sushi or something. Thanks Parker, excellent pick!
My opinions are so mixed on this album that I've been putting off responding about it for a week now. So, I'm just gonna rip off the band-aid and go for it.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I listened to this, I absolutely hated it. I legitimately thought you were pulling a prank on us. It took me three tries to actually make it all the way through, but at that point, I began to warm up to it.
I think if you keep track of our opinions and tastes you can see certain themes in all of our responses. I'm sure one thing that sticks out in a lot of mine is my love of cohesiveness. I'm not asking for every song to sound the same, but a lack of focus can turn me off of an album. I bring this up because, shockingly, this album's wide range did not bother me. In fact, for me, it was one of the things I enjoyed the most. The ladies have a wide variety of musical skill and do a good job of being diverse while always being interesting. Sometimes too broad of a stroke can be almost like...subtraction by addition, if that makes sense, but the math on this record is solid.
I very much enjoyed the instrumentation and production. I kind of wish this was a purely instrumental album, to be honest. They have a good ear for blending genres and can really put together captivating backdrops. No matter what negative opinion one might have about the album, you can't argue that the tracks aren't interesting.
I had a hard time with the vocals. I really did. Not as much the broken English, but I just found the sound a bit grating. A lot of the times the lyrics are just sort of talk-sung in a way I did not find particularly charming. Speaking of the lyrics, I can't say I found the food stuff very interesting either. Varying times it is well done, Artichoke being the prime example. I think more often though the lyrics in the songs not about food were far more deserving of attention. It feels like a forced theme that boxed in the otherwise very strong song writing. The "quirky" vibe also feels incredibly forced to me. I'm sure it really isn't, but it just comes off that way to me. You mentioned the linear notes having "sighing and coughs", among other things. That just screams that kind of fake "lol so random" sort of thing.
But anyway. I think this may be one of my favorite picks anyone has done. Not because I enjoyed it the most, but because it was so damn confusing, difficult, and challenging for me. I'm so conflicted on my feelings toward it, that I find it extremely captivating. Maybe that's what they're going for. Either way, it makes me feel many different ways, which is all I can really ask for from a piece of art.
I enjoyed this album, but I'm not sure I'll listen again. The sound is a bit dated - I'm not sure it aged super well. It's got that very distinctive 90's trip hop vibe but something about it makes it different than, say, Portishead, in terms of how it dates now. I think it's a bit more poppy and "bubblegummy", for lack of a better term. In general, I felt there were some really strong songs, and the rest kind of lacked. My favorite songs were: Apple, Sugar Water, Theme, and the last song, Jive, which I guess is a bonus track. On the flip side, I found the rest of the songs to be kind of forgettable, except Birthday Cake, which was just too abrasive for my lil' ears to handle.
ReplyDeleteI used to play Jet Set Radio Future on my Dreamcast all the time so I was surprised that I didn't recognize Birthday Cake - but it's funny that that song is my least favorite. I loved that game back in the day.
Also, it's really interesting that Sean Lennon joined the band for a couple of albums. I love the work he's doing now in Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, so I'll have to check those out.