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All
Tomorrow's Party:
alive 0064.CD
You Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide
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Wow. A Japanese
power trio who sound like a fuzzed out Sonic Youth mixed with
BRMC at times, opening with a title that says it all, "Sympathy
for the Junkies." It starts off the album on a stormy note,
and is followed by a set of songs that are dark, psychedelic,
and always passionate. - Cleo Merode / The
Sentimentalist |
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Japanese trio All
Tomorrow's Party revels in psychedelic rock. Singer/songwriter/guitarist
Tetsuo Kitame and buds proffer scorching garage rock ("Fever,"
"Light of Love"), rocking dream pop ("As Tears
Go By," "Love Can Bring You Down"), sweet jangle
pop ("In Shade of Blue," "Sure Love"), spacey
jamming ("Sympathy For the Junkie," "The Night
Porter")-the woiks. That the band is almost frighteningly
good at everything makes Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide not only
an orgasmic treat for psych-heads, but also an ideal intro for
novices to psych's mind-expanding delights. Michael Toland /
High
Bias |
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Wow, must be my
lucky day, its not very often that an album made by a Japanese
power trio falls through the door. Even luckier is the fact that
they sound like a perfect cross between Mudhoney, The Velvets,
Teenage Fanclub, Sonic Youth, and The Beatles (albeit buried
under thick layers of glorious fuzz) and they are bloody good
to boot. Opening with a flourish "Sympathy for The Junkies"
is a glorious wall of noise and melody, sounding like the gathering
of storm clouds as the band slowly build the sonic tension, the
speakers crackling with angry electricity, before "love
Can Bring You Down" opens the floodgates with a demented
riff straight from the songbook of Husker Du. Next up "Light
Of Love" is all early Mudhoney and dripping with feedback
before the band softens the edges with the sixties influenced
"In Shade Of Blue". Led by guitarist/vocalist Tetsuro
Kitame, All Tomorrow's Party have been together two years and
obviously have a varied and excellent range of influences, which
they put to good use throughout this shimmering debut album,
that exhibits all the passion and power that made us fall in
love with rock'n' roll in the first place. By the time "Cracked"
seduces and hypnotises us with its liquid, bass- heavy groove
we are totally hooked, happily swimming in a sea of sound, and
oblivious to the world outside. Here the band sound like Sonic
Youth jamming with The Stone Roses, creating a fine slice of
psychedelia, timeless in it's melancholy flow, and from here
on in the band own your soul, toying with your emotions and plying
your body with a musical fix rarely found in so pure a form.
Further into the album "As Tears Go By" has little
to do with Marianne Faithfull and everything to do with a perfect
song, before the band head straight for the jugular again with
frantic pace of "Bad Bee Says" which is primitive rock'n'roll
at its most sublime. Finally "The Night Porter" leads
us home with a tumbling riff that echoes the precision of Cans'
finest work and reminds why this album is called "Yoo Doo
Right Yoo Doo Slide". Music this passionate and memorable
comes around but rarely, I suggest you grab a slice of the cake
and have yourself a real good time. - Simon Lewis / Terrascope
UK |
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All Tomorrow's Party
started out as a Velvet Underground cover band. Their mind-bending,
teeth-grinding roots are firmly intact, but this powerfully talented
Japanese space rock trio has established its own sound, even
if it evolves constantly through the course of one album. Yoo
Doo creeps up and grabs you by the brain just 15 seconds into
the first track. In "Sympathy for the Junkies," slow,
sinuous, psychedelic guitar moans over the slinky beat of maracas
for four-minutes of spaced out bliss. Then the band kicks into
grittier gear, tossing off a fuzz-fueled guitar romp called "Love
Can Bring You Down" that's driven by a manic, hollow drumming.
Eventually, the track morphs into a distorted slab of sonic mayhem
only to locate the groove again at the finish. Delicious. The
Velvet influence is, of course, evident here, as is the reassuring
ghost of Iggy Pop. But the Party also invites comparisons to
Mudhoney, Queens of the Stone Age, Teenage Fanclub, the Beatles,
even Pink Floyd. Front man Jetsuo Kitame supplies the vocals
and guitars, and uses both to veer from gritty dirges to chiming,
optimistic melodies undercut with just the right amount of dissonance.
Not a bad song on this disc. - Michael Coleman / Your
Flesh
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As if the title's
Can nod isn't enough to tip you to this Japanese trio's '60s/'70s
space-rock mojo, proof spins into view on the very first track,
"Sympathy For the Junkies," an acid-gobbling instrumental
mélange of Hendrixian guitar, sonorous bass and hissing
maracas. Sympathy for Spacemen 3, by any other name. Things then
quickly kick into fuzz overdrive with "Love Can Bring You
Down," which channels the shoegaze nation via a sleek Swervedriver
ripoff. And the hits keep coming: "Light Of Love" rams
the Stooges through a Hawkwind sieve; "Cracked" turns
dreamy and modal, like the Doors' "The End" reinterpreted
by Quicksilver Messenger Service (ATP guitarist/ vocalist Tetsuro
Kitame reportedly has been called "the Asian Jim Morrison");
and "The Night Porter" plows a groove that's clearly
the product of many hours spent listening to the Velvet Underground
- as if the band's name hadn't clued you in to that already.
Now all of this might make it seem like the trio's got nary an
ounce of originality. But ATP, as with fellow cosmonauts the
Warlocks or the Black Angels, know the difference between imitation
and inspiration. The former is a sincere form of flattery but
is ultimately ephemeral. The latter, however, is the domain of
artistry, and if it means starting with primary colors in order
to locate one's jumping-off point, well ... who's gonna argue
with some of the musical icons name-checked above - primary rock
'n' roll colors, all. - Fred Mills / Detroit
Metro Times
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All Tomorrow's Party
manage to stitch together disparate influences to fashion a highly
engaging album. Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide opens with an epic
dirge that recalls Bardo Pond's hypnotic approach, and then the
disc takes an abrupt turn, delivering the fuzzed-out shoegazer
pop of "Love Can Bring You Down." The Japanese group
also dip into blues rock territory on a couple of songs and pull
off multiple transitions with ease. Rather than seem disjointed,
Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide shows varied tunes that are united
by strong song writing prowess. - Rob Nay / Exclaim
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If you're in a band
with a name referencing The Velvet Underground and a record titler
referring to Germany's Can, you're probably already on the right
path. This English-singing Japanese trio's sound recalls the
Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub, with some additional fuzz and
psychedelic noodling; and each track takes the band in a different
direction. "Love Can Bring You Down" is like Thurston
Moore fronting a '60s garage band, while "In Shade of Blue"
wouldn't be misplaced in Alex Chilton's repertoire. Add All Tomorrow's
Party to the eclectic list of superb bands that Japan has given
us in recent memory (e.g. Pizzicato Five, Shonen Knife, Merzbow),
so don't pass this up. - David Barker / Scratch #118
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Aso! This is a brilliant
Japanese psychedelic mess -- the likes of which I haven't come
across since Comets On Fire. These guys have a few more manners
than the Comets, and they sound just a smidgen less modern, but
when they go fast & hard, you get a pretty enjoyable sonic
buzz. Things start out with a slow, deliberate jam... Sounds
good enough, but when track two kicks it into high gear you get
a true taste of what these guys can do. It all sounds so familiar,
but it doesn't seem like they're ripping anyone off. Things settle
into a hazy, seemingly drug-addled groove -- the only thing missing
is the chemical light projections. Excellent. - Phil / Odyssey
Zine
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The sound definitely
gives nods to both the 60's garage sound as it does to psychedelic
arena rock, much in the same way The Dandy Warhols did, the Brian
Jonestown Massacre do, and many of the past Manchester Psyche-pop
bands have, and they steer a little bit further out into the
extended improvisational sagas. By "improvisational saga"
I mean they noodle or vibe out for long periods but it sounds
pleasant, not random. However, I must mention that one reason
you might really like All Tomorrow's Party is because you really
liked the bands from the past that they sound like. - The Swede
/ Culture
Bunker
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This is a weird,
dark, full-bodied brew and an album in which to lose yourself
among de-tuned guitars and crunchy dissonance. Man can't survive
on garage punk and Detroit rock alone (although some of us occasionally
try) and those of us too whacked out or distracted to care about
the L.A. Paisley Revival of the 1980s can now go tripping with
these psych happy Jappie chappies.
The one-sheet
sets up ATP as a cross between Hawkwind and Crazy Horse and there's
a passing resemblance to both in the heavier moments, but there's
more than that to meet the ear.. The more mellow of us, for example,
will pack a peace pipe with their substance of choice, light
up and lilt off to the almost-too-dreamy-for-its-own-good track
like "Juliette". (By the way, despite a passing resemblance
to Lebanese hash, I'm told smoking cones of Darrell Lea natural
eating liquorice induces head-spins but also raises your blood
sugar levels to dangerous heights AND has you splattering the
porcelain throne for most of the next day).
Despite a couple
of slow jams, taken as a whole, "You Doo Right" veers
to the louder side of the spectrum. "Cracked", for
example, overlays guitar that scores 7.2 on the Robert Quine
Fractured Scale. The sound is choppy enough to sink a 12-metre
yacht. Nico's nowhere to be heard (despite the band's singularly
Jinglish appropriation of her peak Velvets moment in their name)
as guitarist Tesuo Kitane weaves a beguiling vocal web throughout
10 of these dozen tunes. The other two ("Sympathy For the
Junkies" and "The Night Porter") are instrumental
bookends. Kitane's fluid fretwork straddles a line between noisy
and melodic with all the dexterity of a veteran of the Moscow
Circus highwire on an incentive contract. Bandmates Yoshitaka
Asano (bass) and Taro Ishikawa (drums) lay down basic, crisp
rhythms that ensure minimal drag as ATP charts its way across
the deceptively dangerous seas of Planet Psych.
Alive/Total Energy seemed to be well hooked into some
of the best music coming out of Japan in the '90s (remember the
Who-on-steroids crunch of The Michelle Gun Elephant?) and here's
evidence that their pipeline remains intact. - The Barman / I-94
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I'd like to describe
All Tomorrow's Party as the Japanese version of Yo La Tengo,
but that wouldn't quite do it. Even at their most dissonant,
this album is perfect. Their twelve-song album, Yoo Doo Right,
Yoo Doo Slide starts off with a six minute and eighteen second
acid-trip appropriately called "Sympathy for the Junkie."
This track, with it's insistent bass line and echo-box guitar
riff put me definitely in mind of Yo La Tengo, The Ocean Blue,
or even The Mermen. This track is so mellow and so groovy that
as soon as it ended, the next track came on loud and hard. "Love
Can Bring You Down" -- the second track on this CD goes
heavy on fuzz guitar and a solid drumbeat that drives this song
home. There is something about the chord progressions in this
song that makes me think of the Police, circa Regatta de Blanc,
but not as polished, though this song is certainly perfect in
it's imperfection. "Light of Love" takes on a Jet feel
with a driving punk progression and screaming vocals that make
me think of Volkswagen commercials. Track six, "Cracked,"
gets back into the same groove as the first song with this slow,
deep, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds vibe. Track seven, "Juliette"
kicks ass. Just as I think I know where they're going, they pull
off some sick, American Analog Set/James Taylor-style acoustic
track that I can't stop humming along with. Yoo Doo...
is a CD that demands to be listened to more than once. It's simple
enough to get into from the first track, yet deep enough that
I'm still trying to figure it all out and enjoying the ride.
- Ben Jones / Left
Hip Magazine
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Les All Tomorrow's
Party auraient pu exister à deux périodes différentes
de l'histoire du Rock n'Roll. D'un côté, on ressent,
dans ce « You doo right, you doo slide »,
l'élan anarchiste et défoncé des Hawkind,
Pink Fairies, Blue Cheer et autres freaks trashers du début
seventies. L'envie d'en baver à travers des morceaux longs
et sauvages à l'image de l'instrumentale « Sympathy
for the Junkie » ou du ravagé « Light
of love ». De l'autre, il y a ces passages mélodiques,
« In shade of blue », « Healer »,
qui nous éclipsent au début des années 90
au croisement de l'indie et de la brit pop. L'époque du
« Shoegaze ». Une période qui a
également fourni son contingent de drogués, Ride,
Primal Scream et les Charlatans en tête de file. Ces Japonais
mixent ces influences, peut être sans le vouloir. Mais
ça ne s'invente pas. Le trio plane à 10 mille.
«Craked» et «Juliette » s'affirment
comme de merveilleuses psychés songs dans la veine des
premières compositions d'Andy Bell. Le reste appartient
à la folie. « The night porter »
clôture le disque comme il avait commencé, par le
chaos. Un tourbillon de violence mêlé de fleurs
pop ayant comme slogan « You doo right, you doo slide »,
voila ce qu'il faut retenir de ces All Tomorrow's Party, la réponse
méchante aux Anglais de Kasabian. - Alexis Kacimi / The
Fake (Switzerland)
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All Tomorrow's Party
is just another example of how the Japanese are far more advanced
than we are in everything. And when you listen to 'Yoo Doo Right,
Yoo Doo Slide' you will be able hear exactly what I mean. A mixture
of psychedelic and garage rock, it comes together brilliantly.
As my cd changer goes from track to track I never know what I'm
gonna get. Which is why I like this album so much. This album
has it all, from the slower ballad like tunes to the hard rockin'
jams you would expect from a garage rock band. But there is no
denying the ability of this trio. - Josh / ePunk-zine
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Japanese drone-based
psych that actually breaks out into rock n roll every now and
then! Move over Loudness! - Roctober
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Every once in while
it pays to take a chance on an unfamiliar band, whether it's
because they have an interesting name or a nice album cover or
whatever. Sure, the gems are few and far between, but nothing
beats the serendipitous joy of actually finding one. Stumbling
onto Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide by All Tomorrow's Party, a
trio from Shimokitazawa, Japan, was more like an epiphany. The
band's name is a not-so-obscure reference to the Velvet Underground.
The album title (at least the Yoo Doo Right part) is also the
name of an epic song by the 70s German experimental band Can,
a group that had a Japanese singer named Damo Suzuki (although
not at the time they recorded "Yoo Doo Right"-go figure).
All Tomorrow's Party
doesn't really sound like Can or the Velvet Underground (although
they were a Velvets cover band when they first formed), but the
spirit is there. Guitarist and vocalist Tetsuo Kitame, bassist
Yashitaka Asano and drummer Taro Ishikawa wrench every bit of
emotion and energy out of their music, whether they're playing
an all-out rocker like "Love Can Bring You Down" or
a ballad of shimmering beauty like "Juliette."
The album opens
with a hypnotic instrumental called "Sympathy for the Junkies"
that is anchored by a repetitive bass groove over which Kitame
works his guitar magic. After this relatively mellow song, the
aforementioned "Love Can Bring You Down" kicks in with
huge fuzzed-out guitars and savage drumming that stand in contrast
to the pleasant, 60s-era psychedelic-pop vocal sensibility that
marks this song and the album as a whole. Midway through the
song, however, the melody devolves into a free-form freak-out
with cymbals crashing and feedback wailing. Then, just as suddenly
as it started, the guitar drops back on the groove and the song
continues right where it left off. "Light of Love"
is one of the more up-front rock songs on Yoo Doo Right, Yoo
Doo Slide, obviously influenced by the Stooges with a classic
riff and vocals with a little more of a nasty edge to them than
on other tracks. "Cracked" is a hypnotic gem that starts
out with a chest-rattling bass line that repeats throughout the
song with metronomic regularity as two psychedelic, effects-laden
guitars wash over the top in intertwining, liquid lines.
One of the most
fascinating aspects of All Tomorrow's Party is their ability
to freely appropriate from rock and roll's illustrious past without
seeming the least bit derivative. A case in point is "As
Tears Go By," a fantastic, melodic pop song that, most obviously,
shares a title with a Rolling Stones song (which it sounds nothing
like). The careful listener will notice that the song's dominant
riff, a descending chord progression, is the same as "You're
Gonna Miss Me" by the 13th Floor Elevators, a band listed
among ATP's influences. Finally, the chorus repeats the line,
"you gotta hide your love away," a lyric first made
famous by the Beatles. They manage to do all of this in one song
without sounding remotely like any of the source material.
There are a few
obvious influences for the band-the Stooges, droney British bands
like Loop and My Bloody Valentine, the glistening pop of Big
Star-but they're not a derivative band at all. Their daring acts
of appropriation give their music a hint of recognizability and
insinuate it into a coherent musical tradition, but they never
fail to sound refreshingly unique in their own right. The material
on Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide, was originally released in Japan
as two EPs in 2004. Alive Records has combined the two for this,
their fist U.S. release. Grab yourself a copy, because it's one
of the best albums of the year. - Pete Blackwell / Blogcritics
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The Velvet Underground
and Can references (in the band's name and album title, respectively)
provide touchpoints for this Japanese trio's sound, but the bulk
of their work is less edgy than VU and less avant-garde than
Can. More accurate comparisons would be to modern-day power-pop
rockers like Teenage Fanclub, Smashing Pumpkins, or the 70s-obsessed
work of Matthew Sweet. What sets ATP apart is that their guitar
base is leavened by trippy psychedelic space-rock flavors like
the backward electric guitar played against strummed acoustics
on "Sure Love" or the bass-heavy opening jam "Sympathy
for the Junkies." Fronted by guitarist/vocalist Tetsuo Kitame,
the band takes notes from '60s psych stalwarts like the 13th
Floor Elevators and Electric Prunes, but without turning themselves
into a retro act. The buzzing guitars and droning vocals fit
into a modern context that's aware of the raw energy of '70s
punk, '80s grunge and more recent rock revivals. What's especially
impressive is that the music doesn't pinpoint any of its sources,
instead the songs skim, mix and rearrange elements of each, creating
music that's got the DIY glee of punk, the muscle of grunge,
and the daydream artfulness of space-psych. - Eli Messinger /
Amazon.com
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To be honest, it
took me a couple listens to really get into All Tomorrow's Party.
I'm comparing it to sushi. It's an acquired taste. Whether it's
the fuzzy guitars, the psychedelic space rock/garage rock with
hints of the Stooges, the Beatles and 60's era pop, it somehow
still manages to work. Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide can
be compared to a drug. You start off low, slow and gradually
build up and at its peak it's a great feeling and as the album
winds down, so do you. Which seems to make sense since the theme
of the album is love and drugs. "Sympathy for the Junkies"
is a mellow, six minute instrumental introduction to the album
that sets a heavy bass mood until "Love Can Bring You Down"
starts. "Juliette", a psych pop love song of sorts
with a heavy 60's British band influence done acoustic style
- (" something in the way / she loves me will it bring you
down? / ride into the sun / tell me what you want me do")
The dreamy "As Tears Go By" is full of bittersweet
lyrical poetry ("Don't wanna kiss you / But I need you so")
and ("Love can bring you down by here / I just say you're
my burning spear") with an oddly familiar line at the end
of the song (" Now you've gota hide your love away").
Songs like "Fever" and "Light of Love" are
perfect examples of 60's garage rock while "Bad Bee Says"
is a fuzzy scuzzy solid rock track. Shimokitazawa, Japan's All
Tomorrow's Party has only been around for two years but they
have a sound that makes you think they've been playing together
for much longer. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Tetsuo Kitame described
the band's sound as being "violent, sexy, timeless, dark,
melodic and hallucinogenic" . His vision of what he wanted
ATP to sound like was "a sound like we are living in a spaceship
and moving around the globe slowly". Kitame must be happy
- he has pulled it off. - Jones Violet / Blogcritics
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You know you rock
when you can make my Mom dance! However Mom, aside All Tomorrows
Party can make anyone move with their infectious blend of soft
powerful vocals and a sound that's a hybrid of 60's psychedelic
and rock. Almost like The Doors meet The Beach Boys. Great song
writing wonderful harmonies and mysterious lyrics, tracks like
Sympathy for the Junkies and Healer run through you like the
highs and lows of addiction. Dizzying manic fast paced highs
slowing settling to a sweet peaceful calm as they bring you down
with their musical drug. This is a great disc to spend your day
with, and it'll make your mom dance! - Sameerah / Ectomag
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All Tomorrow's Party
is a trio of Japanese musicians who are skillfully adept at sculpting
a trippy, enchanting form of Garage-style Psychedelia seemingly
out of thin air. The melody-enriched musical structuring of Yoo
Doo Right varies from being frenzied to plush to ambient
to poppy to discordant to folky. It's a mystical, magical jaunt
into an aural realm where jangly reverb-drenched guitar rhythms
and luminous astral leads randomly exchange emotions with crunchy
mind-blowing power chords and where the radiantly stellar bass
and drum alliance veers from dreamy and hypnotic to brash and
cacophonous whenever each song necessitates such a warranted
course of action. The vocalist effectively delivers his poetically
sincere lyrics in a drowsy, semi-slurred manner that brings to
mind a spiritually exhilarant sultan who's constantly enshrouded
in a haze of opium smoke and lush, kaleidoscope hallucinations.
Wow! I've just been taken on the ride of my life by three intergalactic
samurai minstrels in a shiny, flat, and circular spacecraft that
the earthling race calls a compact disc. What a trip! - Moser
/ Under The Volcano
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"Sympathy for
the Junkies" es la carta de presentación del disco
y es un anuncio de todo lo que se oirá después:
Una mezcla de influencias psicodélicas que pasan por diferentes
periodos, desde 13th Floors Elevators, The Velvet Underground,
hasta cosas como Teenage Fan Club, Spiritualized, Chapterhouse
y la última etapa de The Telescopes. - Iván Daguer
/ Especial
35 (Chile)
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All Tomorrows Party
is a Japanese band that wraps up some really interesting multilayered
guitar sounds into a hypnotic droning of the psyche. I
checked out their website...and from what I could understand
in English it makes total sense that they would dig on the 13th
Floor Elevators, the Seeds, the Velvet Underground, and the Stooges.
Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out, Get Up, Dust Off, Repeat. -
Time2RocknRoll
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When it works, Yoo
Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide is pretty good. "Light of Love"
and "Bad Bee Says" (is he actually saying "Kurt
Cobain is innocent" over a fairly Nirvana-esque riff?) stand
out on the garage side of things. If you dig the Beatle/power
pop vibe, I recommend "In Shade of Blue" and ""As
Tears Go By", which even name checks "Hide Your Love
Away". - BMarkey / Numberonehitsong.com
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