Blues du Jour

Maher Shalal Hash Baz is the long-running, and "deliberately amateur-sounding" ensemble from Japanese songwriter/bandleader Tori Kudo. (Deliberately amateur-sounding? Try pseudo-naive, or faux-naive.

A few months ago on another site I wrote of the band (in the context of their album Blues du Jour):

Ppl have been spazzing out about and awarding big kudos to Tori Kudo's latest avant folk creation; it's all deserved. It's his most soulful, compassionate work and at only 41 tracks, is considerably shorter than his legendary 83 song opus, Return Visit To Rock Mass. [The song] Futility is so little, and yet it's so big. Does that make sense? I mean it only clocks in at a little over a minute, and it covers off all the emotional and compositional bases it could ever need to just so damn fine.....

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Futility (1 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)


I've been listening to the new Maher Shalal Hash Baz record L'Autre Cap quite a lot recently. Upon hearing it, someone asked me to try to explain what the hell it was all about. (I don't think they really liked it.) I struggled at the time, but sitting on the bus this morning, squinting into the late-winter sun as we barreled down Lambton Quay, it struck me like a hammer-blow to the temple.

This is what aQuarius records wrote about L'Autre Cap:

As always, it's a magical, melancholic mishmash of lilting indie-pop, innocently sweet vocals, lovelorn lyrics, little big band (dis-)arrangements, woozy horns, percussive pitter patter, gently jazzy guitars, bassoon bass lines, and dysplastic Farfisa, all performed with unique, shambolic charm. Fans will be happily aware of what they're getting into here. Those unfamiliar with the band, we suspect you'll also enjoy the unsteady but friendly hugs Kudo and crew are doling out to your ears (and wish you could squeeze 'em back). That is, unless you're particularly hard of heart and/or uptight about musicians not "coloring outside the lines" as it were.

... and so this morning it all made sense in a whole wrapped-up no-loose-ends kinda way, it's all about the avant-pop semi-composed lunacy/experimentalism of The Red Crayola, of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band on Trout Mask Replica... and an amateur brass band, or the Portsmouth Sinfonia, or something.

Got me?