Onna
Onna
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Holy Mountain
The idea of reviewing Onna scared me. Too used to the usual indie types, psychedelic weirdos and British people with guitars (often the same band), I found myself facing completely unfamiliar avant-garde music by a Japanese underground cartoonist. What was I going to say about this? Would I treat the material properly or would I come off as ignorant? By now if you're thinking, "You chose to review it, asshole," you're right. I chose to review it, asshole. So let's listen to this shit.
You can tell Keizo Miyanish, the man behind Onna, is a fan of the latter half of The Velvet Underground & Nico and the last track of White Light/White Heat, both of which proved that guitars can be used to intentionally make cacophonous racket as opposed to cacophonous racket being a sign of a lack of talent (let's not debate this here, eh?). With only one song under five minutes, Onna allows the songs to breathe rather than fit a traditional pop song structure or conventional song aesthetics. For example, "The Swan Song" is a piece built from a repetition of guitar notes that grow as more elements are unobtrusively added to the background. What starts out seemingly as a guy noodling on his guitar soon turns into something much bigger and noisier.
While most listeners will never get used to Miyanish's moaning wails, as grotesquely sexual as the wrinkled nude depicted on the album cover, the music is fairly solid, especially in Onna's oppressive, daunting, pseudo-industrial opening track "Cortigiana Dal Velo." Fuzzy guitars screech over a primitively limp electronic beat and compete with the singer's caterwauls for the listener's attention. The vocals often win the battle, never quite rising above tolerable distraction and sometimes even courting irritation.
Occasionally, however, Miyanish puts his moaning to proper use, as in the live version of "Cortigiana Dal Velo." Whereas the studio version is pulsating, haunting and seven minutes long, the live reprise is twice that length; stretched to the point of strangulation, it's a method that better suits the singer's voice. The pained, emotional performance ends with scattered, perfunctory applause: not quite the expected reaction, but then you have to remember what you're listening to.
That said, the music of Onna contains surprising entry points. The most conventional song, "La Chanson," is a bluesy tune that lasts a merciful 3:33 and flirts with accessibility to the point where even the singer's voice doesn't grate. "Enfolding Your Breasts..." is an almost sunny bit of psychedelia that wouldn't be out of place on a Super Furry Animals album, while "Were You to Become a Mother" is a shockingly rocking callback to Low-era David Bowie.
At its worst, Onna is completely obscure and incomprehensible, a cobbling together of disparate tracks, as if an entire Prince-like vault burned down and the surviving songs were able to fit on a CD. The result is a mix of studio tracks, live renditions and stuff like "Le Chat Noir," which sounds like a cassette tape demo of Onna attempting its usual near-psychedelic noise in the living room with an acoustic guitar.
I can say nothing of the lyrics. It's not often stated, but any review of a work done in a foreign language is going to be limited because of the writer's lack of intimacy with the language in question. Even with three years of high school Japanese under my belt, I can only pick up bits and pieces of lyrics from The Pillows or The Brilliant Green (not counting the parts that are in English), and the strange experience of Onna distracts from any attempt on my part to figure out what the hell Miyanish is singing about. You don't need a degree in international relations to understand rock 'n' roll, but for most Western listeners the lyrics will remain a mystery, never having the same impact that they do for native speakers. Context clues lead me to believe that the lyrics are strained and self-flagellating.
While not as inaccessible as it may initially appear, it's difficult to figure out just who Onna is for. Those with more traditional tastes may be able to appreciate some of the familiar cues but would ultimately be put off by the rest of it, and those who aspire to illuminate the obscure may not even be able to penetrate it.
by Danny Djeljosevic