Barbee Boys

Listen! is full of gate effects and drum beats panning from side to side, lending the record a certified vintage 80s, and easily obsolete, feel. It was all very avant-garde by mainstream Japanese music standards then, but it's not quite fashionable today. And after 13 years since their breakup in 1992, Barbee Boys seem to have been pretty much forgotten. So why write about them now?

For me, maybe it's sentimental. A friend of mine from junior high gave me this disk, although we both knew that because the band was Japanese, we probably wouldn't take it seriously. You see, our favorites then were A-ha, David Bowie, Prince and Journey. I gave the Barbee Boys a listen and promptly forgot about them. It wasn't until last year, when my music collection moved to my computer and iTunes became my jukebox, that I started to notice the songs from this album more and more, as my computer randomly played songs from my collection.

When juxtaposed among the music played today, something in their songs stands out and pulls me in. There's something very forward and intriguing about the sound, and the songs are complex yet catchy, like tunes from the big-band swing era, with lots of layers and musical ideas packed into a compact package. And listening to it now, I can see the band's musical idea can be squarely placed on a lineage that started in post-punk Britain — somewhere between Roxy Music of the 70s and the Sugar Cubes of the 90s.

The guitarist, whose ideas are largely responsible for the band's sound, made a solo album last year with an indie label called Trash Records in Japan. I might be picking that one up when I go to Japan next time...