Shirushi

Album review

If you love pop music as an international phenomena that brings together a wealth of cultures and ideas, then Teke::Teke may well be the band you've been waiting for all your life. Hailing from Montreal, Teke::Teke began as a one-off project from a handful of musicians paying homage to Takeshi Terauchi, one of the heroes of Japanese eleki music, a style of mostly-instrumental rock that put a unique regional spin on the stylistic framework of the Ventures' classic recordings. Once they began writing their own material, the group travelled a considerable distance from that starting point, and 2021's Shirushi, their first full-length album, is a dazzling and dizzying journey through an amalgam of eleki, Japanese traditional music, indie rock, film scores, psychedelia, art rock, and other subgenres that may exist only in the fertile imaginations of the musicians involved. The dominant instrumental flavors on Shirushi are the precise, buzzy yet twangy guitar figures of Serge Nakauchi Pelletier and Hidetaka Yoneyama, the evocative flute of Yuki Isami, the subtle trombone of Etienne Lebel, and the lead vocals of Maya Kuroki, who spins a wildly evocative and compelling story even if you don't understand a word of Japanese. (The rhythm section of bassist Mishka Stein and drummer Ian Lettre are also to be commended for their ability to drive this music forward with style and precision whether in low or high gear.) This music overflows with drama and emotion, sometimes graceful and beguiling ("Tekagami"), other times chaotic and manic ("Meikyu"), and occasionally grand but ominous ("Kizashi"). While the prominent Asian elements in Teke::Teke's music would set them apart in any event, even without them this would be powerful music that's at once challenging and deeply rewarding. Teke::Teke succeeds not because their flavors are exotic (though they sometimes are), but because their music is dynamic, expressive, and boldly takes the listener on a journey to a creative place they almost certainly have never been before. Teke::Teke are far more than the sum of their many influences; they've fashioned them into performances that are as fun as they are intelligent and unique, and Shirushi is as promising and satisfying a debut as any North American group has presented in quite a while.

© Mark Deming /TiVo