Asobi Seksu - Acoustic At Olympic Studios – Rewolf

One Little Indian Records	October 13, 2009

 

Guitar fuzz and assurance were common staples with Asobi Seksu prior to this acoustic outing. Before ReWolf there was an assurance from the band that if the nature of the beast were visceral, loud enough and drowned in a sea of distortion, all would be well. Blind Little Rain, stripped down to practicalities, allows wiggle room for something to blossom, something to develop with the vocals, with the guitar and the keyboard. We’ve been granted admission to something very personal here with this reworking of their previous tracks. And who wouldn’t want to return to past accomplishments with a heightened sense of maturity and humility. There are a few ways to approach an acoustic album – either turn off all the extra noise and hope for the best orreinvent the material. Asobi Seksu are stuck somewhere in the middle, with Breathe Into Glass retaining the same dreamscape emotion, while quieting down everything save for Yuki Chikudate’s voice, her keyboard and James Hanna’s guitar strings, weaving a whole new type of basket to put their fans in.

Asobi Seksu @ The Troubadour 10-01-09

The Hope Sandoval cover of Suzanne is sans-harmonica and brings in the glockenspiel, which sounds great, but feels too pronounced, too sounded out with the vocals and tempo. There’s a staring into a mirror while looking at your reflection in another mirror moment with Walk On The Moon, as Chikudate sings “You saw the photograph, an image of me/ You'll never see me like this/ It's never felt like this/ I'm swimming in gray” as though it were a retrospective to a distant memory – and now you can hear the awe at the passing of time in her voice, in the ethereal guitar strings and how this has all happened before.