Depending on your level of cynicism, Japan is either saving rock n roll or blasting it back to the Stones age. Zoobombs, a throwback act heavily invested in the spazz-jangle of Hendrix, Doors and such, basically sounds like what Black Crowes would be if they weren’t a completely hopeless clump of commercial dingbattery. As is the case with so many relatively exotically born bands, their power stems from being faced with the ironic challenge of having to prove something to American audiences, whose bovine disinterest in anything even remotely enthusiastic has been screwing up its domestic pop culture for decades now. Shimmying moves, Beatle-boot organ, raw in both energy and production, stuff like this is antidotal to the horrendous effects Velveeta-processed emo and basically anything else Billboard has perpetrated of late. American kids really do have a deep-down hunger for this sort of thing — it’s hilarious that no one in the business seems to have figured that out. A

—Eric W. Saeger