Zoobombs Spice Up Melting Pot

Listen to Don Matsuo list the influences that make his band the Zoobombs tick, and you'll be tempted to yawn and roll your eyes. |

"We like blues, soul, rock-bands like the Rolling Stones and James Brown," says the Japanese musician through an interpreter. Sound familiar? Perhaps, but their American debut, Welcome Back, Zoobombs! (Emperor Norton), is anything but. Marked by an unselfconscious sense of fun that's all but missing in most western bands, the album is a genuinely thrilling discovery. Imagine Jon Spencer without the irony -- or with a hint of Beck's slacker alchemy -- and you have some approximation of what the Tokyo-based quartet achieves.

Matsuo says the band's sound has roots in the Japanese way of looking at music. "There are no distinctions made between American or Swedish or African music," he explains. Given this blurring of genres, it's no wonder that his songs show no compunction about playing a distorted blues guitar against a bubblegum organ ("Jumbo") or coupling a screaming techno chorus onto a brooding instrumental verse ("The Swamp"). Even his more straight-ahead tunes, such as "Parking Rock" and "Midnight '69," are played with an energy and innocence that translates as charm. "We're so far removed from the styles in Japan, we have no idea of what's right or wrong [musically], so we just play whatever sounds good."

After years of only seeing America on TV and the movies, Zoobombs made their first visit to the States last spring, wowing crowds in Los Angeles and at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin. While Matsuo was impressed by the directness of the people he met ("They came right up to us after the shows and told us how much they like us. People would never do that in Japan"), he was less pleased by American record stores and radio stations, both of which he says give short shrift to the international market. "Very few people are interested in what's going on outside their own country," he says.

While he insists there's no connection, Matsuo is starting to write songs for the next Zoobombs album in English (With the exception of "Midnight '69," most of Welcome Back is composed of a high-octane hybrid of Japanese and English). "[English] just sounds good," he says. "Even in Japan, no one really listens to the words."

The band will be back in America this fall, and Matsuo is already making plans. "I want to see Graceland and Sun Studio in Memphis, and go to a real blues club in Chicago, and spend some time in New York." Asked if there's anything else he wants to see, he pauses for a moment before answering. "I just want to see America."

Who knows what he might come back with once he's had a closer look.
STEVE MIRKIN(September 14, 1998)