No joke, Fujiya & Miyagi make quality music
Paradise, Boston, February 15, 2009
Reviewed by Jeffrey B. Remz
There is no Fujiya or Miyagi in Fujiya & Miyagi. Nor are they Japanese or play anything at all remotely considered eastern music. So, while the name may be on the humorous side (Miyagi is a character in the movie "The Karate Kid" while Fujiya is a brand of a record player), what the British quartet do is deliver solid danceable grooves with a denseness to the music.
Just exactly what the songs are about wasn't always so clear. For example, the catchy single Knickerbocker starts with lead singer David Best saying "Vanilla strawberry knickerbocker glory/I saw the ghost of lena zavaroni." The song doesn't get all that much clearer from there (the song also involves an ice cream sundae and Zavaroni was a Scottish singer who died of anorexia). Nor do most of the other songs the quartet played.
But if willing to let the lyrics go and settle into the mood and groove, then Fujiya & Miyagi were quite pleasing. The basic idea was to launch a good groove with Steve Lewis on synths, Lee Adams on drums and Matt Hainsby on guitar before Best put it across vocally. That tended to be true from beginning (Ankle Injuries to the close of the two-song encore (Electro Karaoke). The band was often bathed in dark light, putting further emphasis on the music. So did the lack of a lot of talking by the band.
Cassette Single was one of the hour-long set's highlights. Best switched over to keyboards, right next to Lewis, who started the song with a solid beat in a song that was catchy, fast and musically light instrumental.
Adding to the artistic effect throughout was the backing film. Projected on the wall were a zillion dominoes with the numbers of dots on the dominoes changing along with the background color. It meshed well with the music. Fujiya & Miyagi may evoke a sense of jokiness, but the quality of their music is not.
Opening band School of Seven Bells is a comprised of Benjamin Curtis, better known as a former member of Secret Machines and identical twin sisters Claudia and Alejandra DeHeza. The Brooklyn-based band proved to be a strong accompaniment to and meshing well with the headliners.
Alejandra took over most of the lead vocals, although Claudia chimed in on just about every song to create more of a layered effect. Of course, this isn't the sibling harmonies of the Everly Brothers, but what they did create is more of an ethereal, pretty sound. The words often couldn't be heard all that well, but, instead, it was the sound of the voices and music (the sisters were on guitar and keyboards) that made for a good effect. Curtis stood in the middle, guitar in hand, strumming away pretty hard to give a denseness and richness to the music, looking down almost the entire time.
