Boredoms Keep Things Lively, Both On Stage And Off

The Boredoms are a slippery bunch to pin down. Since their official formation in 1986, the noisy Japanese band has produced a racket of wide variation, with gremlin-spazz-punk concerning them for the first half of their career, and epic-tribal-percussive suites making up the bulk of their later work.

Little of this has resembled traditional rock, but the band’s intensity and clear affinity for the weird-rock canon, from Funkadelic to the Ramones to Can, have made them enduringly popular in certain offbeat circles. They also have the benefit of a couple of iconic leaders in dreadlocked mastermind Eye and the disarmingly adorable Yoshimi P-We, who achieved pop immortality in the Flaming Lips song and album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. While almost all of their albums sound different, they share an air of restless experimentation and boundless energy.

The band’s recent live shows are audacious acts of bravado, with three drummers slamming away for about an hour while Eye chants, jumps, and pounds percussive instruments that look like something out of Minority Report. At the Oya Festival in Norway last summer, they produced hypnotic and ear-damaging noise. The band took clear delight in producing waves of jet engine sounds over their thundering beats and Eye’s sputtering, bug-eyed thrashing of his gizmos was pure catharsis. When Yoshimi started singing in a dainty falsetto and the band lurched into something resembling a dance tune, the half deafened crowd hooted their approval. At the end of March this year, they blasted some life into the concrete coffin that is Terminal 5, playing in the round and transforming the place, for one night at least, into the multi-level club of the future that it hopes to be.

The fact that the Boredoms work largely in Japan, seemingly disappear for periods of time, and have a frustratingly far-flung discography does not help American listeners. Their latest album, Super Roots 9, was released in early 2007 in Japan, but did not get an official American release until this April. Even more confounding, the album is a recording of a performance from Christmas Eve 2004.

Super Roots 9 is both tremendous and monotonous, which should come as no surprise to those who have followed the Boredoms in recent years. The three drummers lock into their grooves and crash joyfully along as waves of ambient sound wash over them. Occasionally, Eye screams out gibberish and Japanese. The big addition to the band’s sound is a 20 piece choir that provides a backdrop of angelic singing. The choir renders the record self-consciously grand in a way that the Boredoms have not previously attempted—the opening is all bursts of transcendent voice. When the thing gets galloping, the sound is impossibly huge.

Upon repeat listens, there is more variation in the music than there seems to be at first. At the 13-minute mark, the choir and synthesizers drop out and the drums take on an ominous quality. At the 15-minute mark, some synthesized instrument is being pounded on repeatedly—this could be Eye’s percussive seven necked guitar Sevena, or a glowing orb that produces sound, or some other noise making contraption. With about 11 minutes to go, the drums go into cool jazz-drum solo mode and a single synthesizer line zooms about on its own. When the choir re-enters, they sing something completely different than earlier—something grave and medieval. Finally, the album comes to a swirling close.

Hearing anything but an overwhelming mass of repetitive, though beautiful noise on Super Roots 9 is difficult, and, to be honest, tedious even after investing the time. This is perfect music to have sex to or do drugs to, it is not terribly memorable. The album is a variation on the band’s previous work in the tribal-epic medium rather than a true step forward, and, though it is perhaps prettier on a surface level, it does not match the power of their best work on Vision Creation Newsun. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile page in the long, strange Boredoms saga, and it allows listeners to dream again about where the band’s next wild impulses will take them.