September 1987 • King's World Records
Oh, Japan. Sometimes your imitations of Western music are admirable and pleasing; other times they are silly and confusing. The Swankys seem to fall in the latter group. They played first-wave-style punk rock (about ten years too late) and, while their version isn't too bad compared to a lot of other early punk I've heard, the album still isn't terribly great.
Probably the first thing anyone would notice about this album is the vocals. Now, early punk in general has had its share of annoying vocalists, but this guy takes the cake as far as I'm concerned. It might be partly due to the fact that I don't understand Japanese (understanding the vocals is a bit more important for me when it comes to punk), but even aside from that his style just sounds bad. I can imagine him singing the whole album with his tongue sticking out. It literally sounds like that.
The instruments, though, are all great from a technical point of view; both the guitar and drum lines are more interesting than other comparable albums, so the individual riffs are good to listen to.
So what is it about this album I don't really care for? Well, I guess it comes down to the compositions themselves. This band could probably have been really great with some more solid songwriting. Even though the riffage is nice, the songs on the whole can get a bit repetitive; it doesn't help that they already sound really derivative of late '70s punk, especially the more brain-dead silly stuff that I never cared for. After about five songs or so I'm ready to pack it in; there isn't really anything to miss out on during the second half. Yeah, it's already a decently short album at a half-hour, but it doesn't do much to deserve all that running time.
I'm not a fan of '70s punk so I'll pass on this one, although fans of that style probably won't be disappointed. Instead, I might consider looking into their previous album under the name Gai, which was some very lo-fi crusty hardcore stuff (and you can already tell it's much better).
That girl needs a real shirt.
ReplyDeletewhat about wire? They were 1970's
yeah but they were post-punk, which isn't really the same thing
ReplyDeleteI sup pose that is correct, I just assumed by early punk you were including early post punk as well I assumed you were using a general term.
ReplyDeletePost punk is loads better anyway
well that depends if you consider post-punk to be part of punk; it's debatable
ReplyDeleteand yes, in general, post-punk is better