They would be LAZYgunsBRISKY. No, I’m not kidding, this is a real J-rock band. A real J-rock band. Not your little sister’s Stereopony, or your brother’s SCANDAL. They’re made up of Moe, Lucy, Azu, and Izumi. And they fucking rock.

This is my review of their first full-length album, aptly titled quixotic. Tomorrow (which is the 2-year anniversary of my blog, wow!), I’ll be reviewing their first mini-album, Catching!. Now, Stereopony and SCANDAL do rock, but I find myself more enamored with LAZYgunsBRISKY because they’re just so out of left field and very far removed from the pop vibe that the other two groups have. The singing of Lucy, their vocalist, often sounds like an incomprehensible blend of English and Japanese, and she has a voice that distinctly throws me back to The B-52’s. She does her share of wailing and vocalizing on most of the tracks. The rest of the band pitches in with their instrumental talents and composition, while Lucy seems to handle most of the lyrical value of the songs.

This is a band my father would probably like. That should probably be a notion enough to put me off LAZYguns (I really don’t know how to shorten their name; LGB sounds too close to LGBT, rofl), but for some reason it just intrigues me more. This means that they have a decidedly “American” rock’n'roll sound to them, making them very different from the usual Japanese fare I listen to. The fact that I can go from Morning Musume to LAZYgunsBRISKY in five seconds makes me truly appreciate the variety that music has to offer to us, regardless of what country it’s coming from, and my own capacity to not be biased toward one specific genre. I always contend that I’ll like any song as long as it’s catchy and interesting to me.

This album is a great introduction to a band of LAZYguns’s calibre. The opening track, “wow”, isn’t too overwhelming and boasts a great guitarist. Lucy’s vocals are already a fairly bizarre stream of muddled English that will be prevalent throughout all of LAZYguns’s songs. There are sections of faint harmonizing, and the percussion keeps you tapping your foot the entire time. The second track, “michigan”, is pretty much my favorite out of quixotic — it’s a bold rock track and Lucy yells a lot. I often find that LAZYguns’s best songs are their shortest ones, for some reason. They tend not to drag on as much.

Track #3 is really what persuaded me to give LAZYgunsBRISKY a try: “hello, my name is bitch”. It opens with Lucy simply saying the title, and then dips into a more laidback feel, with all the freneticism of “michigan” left behind. Even when the arrangement picks up a little, it’s still very mellow (as mellow as this band can get). I’m just overwhelmingly into the attitude of a lot of their songs, it seems so genuine and, for lack of better adjectives…tough. Maybe I’m spoiled on sugar idol pop music that often has the lyrical range of “happy” and “sad”, whereas Lucy’s ‘howling’ singing is packed with emotion.

The fourth track is “gotcha”, which has fairly legible English lyrics at the beginning that go along the lines of I hate you / but I love you / got you now. It does sort of drag on, though, which is LAZYguns’s biggest challenge. I don’t want super-short songs, but if it helps keep them from becoming repetitive… I don’t know.

Fifth track is simply titled “hey”. The opening bass sets a cool mood for the song, and is particularly evident throughout the song. I like the desperation that comes out in the shouted “hey!” parts. The sixth track is “people in the motion”, but it doesn’t exactly stand out to me (the guitar melody is great, that’s about it).

“la la la”, track #7, has some sort of muffler over it, giving it an antiquated feel and some standout power from the other tracks. It really sends me back to the rock ‘n’ roll songs of the 1970s. The eighth track, “the trip”, gives me a very fun vibe, likely due to the fast-paced percussion going on in the background. It drags on, though, but is memorable because it’s apparently the first song they played live?

“help me, rock’n'roll” is the ninth track, again demonstrating Azu’s skills as a bassist. The lyrics are entertaining, as it seems Lucy’s speaking directly with this rock’n'roll the title speaks of. I love the guitar melody in the song, it’s catchy and quite enjoyable.

#10 is “indian’s song”. THE best guitar riffs in the whole album. My only issue is that, at this point, it seems LAZYguns’s musical composition seems to be following a pattern. Every song has a seconds-long instrumental introduction. It makes me think of that period where Perfume opened every song with lyrics, allowing the ensuing electronic vibes to take hold of the track after they had sort of ‘announced’ their presence. Then again, if you want to, you could always imagine that each member of LAZYguns sings through their instrument-of-choice, whether it’s Lucy’s vocals or Izumi’s guitar.

The eleventh track is the last, titled “never mind”, that is markedly laidback in comparison with the prior tracks. The sparse composition and melody reminds me of a song I might have heard once. Lucy is much clearer-sounding here, and displays a nice falsetto at one point. The song then picks up slightly, still ingrained in that relaxed manner it began with. The steady drumbeat gives me the impression as if we are marching towards the ending of the album, and the guitar and bass melodies take us to the finishing of the track, and the finale of a great album. I highly recommend LAZYgunsBRISKY to anybody who tends to enjoy J-rock and also has a history with American rock music. Or, hell, anyone who wants a change of pace, because I know that’s where I was coming from.