Explaining or describing Urusei Yatsura is really a rough, lengthy, weird process, but really it is an approach. One has to approach them like any noise-y band, with an open mindful nature, particularly a band using cultures, one with weirdness and cool cultural song titles, even cooler tones.
“Siamese”, for example, a starter as the best, most accessible track on We Are Urusei Yatsura 2023 Expanded/Remastered, is still really weird and noise based, but cool, really, really, really sermons of synths plus stoned by arrival showing that only when its optimized at its best will toned synth-y, pacing, rhythms are the optimal way to create songs with meaning but really only then. Because Urusei Yatsura’s “Siamese” is more typical than “Kewpie Like Watermelons”, and “Pachinko” is in a typical more synths versus more noise way usually better than noise in “You Are My Ashtray”, the power of negative, thinking/the love that brings you down” or “Kewpie Like watermelons”; meaning “Siamese” is still ideal and even while jammed or “Pachinko” played out the synth-y paced vibes, “Siamese” is really like “Pachinko”, even some acoustics hit here in this number and as in most of the best ones, alternates really well with the heavier numbers. Usually, the acoustic vibe is a really, especially important plus for Urusei Yatsura though like in “It Is’, there is crooning, or hip sounding jamming in “Road Song”, again like in vibing “Pachinko” or coolest sounding “Got The Sun”, finally, the most interesting sounds in “(-)”.
Even, primer for their sound, “First Day on the New Planet” has more or less ideal jamming-sounding, specialized, rhythms, which makes these rocking vibes the most accessible found, even in this ages media scenes or sways. So, swaying to that funky rhythm or just swaying to sways, is the best way to access these feelings, swaying is rad in the Urusei Yatsura world of jam-noise. Officially, their musical genre sound is much akin to smoother music, like, pop-rocking songs, but they are really essentials, to really interesting art-rock, primed noise really.
There, 15 years on they broke apart, pieced together into separate, synthy-shoegazey, but still rocklike outfits, into Lawrie and the Grahams, Project A-Ko, and equally strange Larwries’ Project of Everyone Murder, but this release as a compilation shows the Scottish band’s importance and perhaps relevance were they to ever return; the thing is they hit that note the way, U.K. rock, The Go! Team or Stereophonics do, and plus their album and song titles are amazing. See: Scottish Folds, or just You are My Urusei Yatsura and All Hail Urusei Yatsura, as well as song titles: “Hello Tiger”, Teen Dream”, “Siamese”, or even, “Sucky/Kitty Litter”, and the final track which really is ok, but just ok, “The Power of Negative Thinking/The Love that Brings You Down”.
Of course, even the mediocre songs here sound intense, and though “Kewpies Like Watermelon”, “Pow R Ball”, “Siamese”, “Lo-fi Scary Balloons”, “Plastic Ashtray”, “Velvy Blood”, “Death 2 Everyone, and “Teen Dream (Voxel Tapes)” are the favorites generally because they are more accessible, which matters for a noise-y band, numbers such as “Pachinko” and “Phasers on Stun/ Sola Kola” still hold up there too.
Does this round out their sound, maybe, maybe not, but it provides some variety. Perhaps most notably is their weirdness with the Japanese conflicts in the titles, as their band name was built on a Japanese comic name and the titles are generally foreign or weird.
Or finally the enthusiasm from an angry but smiling synth-y band. See, “First Day on a New Planet”, “(-)”, “Kernel”, “On Yr Mind (Voxel Tapes)”, “Silver Krest”, “Black Hole Love”, “It Is”, or “Road Song”. Finally, more great titles in real, but cooler aspects of “Burikko Girl”, or “Got the Sun”. So, eventually things do seem rounded, despite the vastly disparate ending, “The Power of Negative Thinking/ The Love that Brings You Down” versus opener “Siamese”.
Sure, this is still just a compilation in We Are Urusei Yatsura 2023 Expanded/Remastered, from members even still pieced together into separate, synthy-shoegazey, but still rock-like outfits; then 30 years forward, and roughly 35 from the original 85-90’s noise-shoegaze-rocking garage U.K. scene they sprouted from, we have a collection of well-founded recordings in We Are Urusei Yatsura 2023 Expanded/Remastered. Both well done, there is a combination of original there and fresh released tracks are there also; even if past the relevance of their genres of garage-noise to mass culture appeal, as synths and garage noise sounds are always relevant to fans of their respective fields, but to misquote their opening single title, “guitars are’(not)boring’, but actually good to great”, but this release proves manga influenced synths are also great.
