Record Review: Asobi Seksu - Hush

via Ragged Words
Asobi Seksu – Hush
One Little Indian
Release Date: 16/02/2009
Ragged rating: 2.5/5
In a Ragged Word: Opaque

It’s tough to decipher the conflict at the heart of Hush, Asobi Seksu’s third studio album. The song titles ‘Layers’, ‘Transparence’ and ‘I Can’t See’ offer some insight – it’s a case of something hidden away and difficult to find. It’s not an issue of restraint but more simply that these songs don’t differ from one another all that much, therefore Hush suffers a lack of variation. That’s not to say there’s no enjoyment in this record, just that come the closer ‘Blind Little Rain’ it’s all a bit underwhelming. There are few melodies or hooks to catch hold of, even upon repeated listens it’s a wrestling match.

Musically, the motivating element here is Larry Gorman’s drumming, rippling and pulsating across these twelve tracks. Front woman Yuki Chikudate feels hidden away under James Hanna’s gushing guitar work, most of which fleshes itself out above these songs and only really steps things up on the penultimate track ‘Me & Mary’. On Citrus (2006) Chikudate revels amongst a Sigur Rósean delay-guitar maelstrom, but here she labours. It’s the mix that feels problematic. It’s too reverb-laden, overly-glittery, acting like vacuous hole that sucks away the fun.

Perhaps Hush’s biggest gripe is that at the end, with forty-minutes gone, the album’s start doesn’t feel far away. What’s peculiar is the feeling that little has happened or been revealed and the greatest sin is that Chikudate’s lyrics fail to suggest much. For a band with a coitus-implied name (‘Seksu’ translates in Japanese via ‘sekkusu’ as ‘sex’) Hush feels undersexed. But it’s important to emphasise that Asobi Seksu aren’t underachieving, it’s more like something they’re underplaying – conflict. The music is accomplished technically, but it lacks the variation to offer what this band should. Shoegaze is a melancholy thing at its heart, and thus Asobi Seksu are no purveyors of that style. The band’s sound – Hanna’s enveloping, gleeful guitar and Chikudate’s cushioned harmonies – lacks the trauma to really uncover any new ground, to transport you anywhere either new or painfully familiar. Right now it feels as if there’s something Asobi Seksu aren’t telling. Hush, indeed.

Daniel Greenwood