This all-chick Japanese fivesome wants to be a couple of things at the same time. On one hand, they’re good at making things that sound like ESG body-snatched by Vampire Weekend (the shuffle-syncopated “Home”), which leads, logically enough, to surfy girl-group (“Ha Ha Ha”), all of which is simply fancy music-writer fill-up-space-speak for “twee-on-steroids stuff you’d expect to hear from an all-girl lounge-band in a re-make of War of the Gargantuas if Tarantino were in charge.” Now, the other drum they feel compelled to bang is that stereotypical Japanese “crazy-crazy-punk!!” thing, like a cutesy Ting Tings after killing a shipper’s case of pucker-mouth candy (“Uh Ah”), you know the shtick. There’s no reason for crazy-crazy spazz when they’re so close to being the godly embodiment of prime-time-ready twee — I mean, this isn’t a split LP between Slayer and Springsteen, and there’s already a Shonen Knife, see? Whatever, the buzz from this will focus on the quirky wimp-punk stuff; I’m merely providing a caveat emptor if that’s all you’re expecting out of the full-length. B —Eric W. Saeger
