I first discovered EGO-WRAPPIN’ with an incredible live performance of their song ‘Nervous Breakdown’ on youtube. For some reason it took me almost a year to actually pick up one of their albums (I started with their 2008 best-of collection) and even after really digging that album I’ve only gotten their latest release now, months after it came out. I don’t know why I waited so long because I’ve really been into almost everything I’ve heard by this band, and this album is really great.
EGO-WRAPPIN’ is made up of two members, singer Yoshie Nakano and guitar player Masaki Mori and their five piece backing band on this album is dubbed “THE GOSSIP OF JAXX”. They mix retro jazz with modern alternative pop/rock. It’s hard to definitively describe this band’s sound, as it changes from song to song, but through those changes everything fits into a retro American jazz aesthetic. Masaki Mori wears a fedora and two-tone shoes and Yoshie Nakano wears flapper dresses. I try not to focus on image so much, but… friggin’ two-tone shoes! C’mon!
The second single from this album, ‘Go Action’, is probably the best place to start. It’s full of pop hooks, strong melodies, and retro overdriven guitar – The horns in the chorus will get stuck in your head for days. But it’s certainly not a straightforward pop song. Just over halfway through ‘Go Action’ the song takes a brief detour into a palm-muted punk rock guitar fueled frenzy, then goes back into the retro jazz chorus like it was nothing. Curve balls like this are all over the album.
‘Darui’ is the other single from this album – the arrangement is generally quite spare, and focuses on Yoshie Nakano’s supple voice. Nakano’s vocals are uncommonly soulful – she sounds a bit like a less experimental UA – and the arrangements of this album help to bring them to the front.
There are a couple of weird places on this album – statring with the first track, ‘Red Shadow’. Wild drums, a deep bass groove, atonal saxophone blips, and Yoshie Nakano screaming through a megaphone all build into a frantic ending that even I think is over the top noisy (but in a very good way). It’s a very ‘Soil & “Pimp” Sessions’ style song – chaotic and noisy.
The rest of the album covers a lot of ground – ‘Kagen no Zuki’ is centered around accordion, ‘Whammy Kiss’ features a bassline reminiscent of The Beatle’s ‘Day Tripper’, and closing ballad ‘Dear Mama’ has a 60’s pop influence that fans of Advantage Lucy should be all over. When a band tries to tackle a lot of different sounds at once there’s a risk that they’ll miss the essence of each of them. EGO-WRAPPIN’ succumbs to that in places – I’m not going to pretend that ‘Whammy Kiss’ is a masterpiece – but they do a good job of keeping their core intact even when stretching out a bit.
Here are two videos from EGO-WRAPPIN’ AND THE GOSSIP OF JAXX – if you like these videos you’ll probably dig the whole album. I don’t know of any digital distributers with this one, but it is on Yesasia.com, CDJapan, and Amazon Japan.
GO ACTION:
Darui: (I love this Michel Gondry-esque video)
