REVIEW: SCANDAL “Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal” EP
SCANDAL
Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal
(Kitty Inc.)
Availability: CD EP, iTunes US & Japan
Rating: 
SCANDAL – vocalist/guitarist Haruna Ono, vocalist/lead guitarist Mami Sasasaki, vocalist/bassist Tomomi Ogawa, and drummer Rina Suzuki – have left quite the impression on American J-Pop fans since they toured as part of the Japan Nite package tour this past spring. The group was the smash hit of the entire tour by all accounts, and copies of their first single Space Ranger were selling out at every tour stop. So it is no surprise that anticipation for a full-length SCANDAL album was high.
Well, it looks like anticipation will still be high for a full-length SCANDAL album. Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal is a four-song EP and three of the songs have already been released as their first three singles. Fortunately, it makes sense to include all three singles on this EP, given how quickly they have sold and how hard they are to obtain as physical CDs outside of Japan.
The “new” track which opens the EP, “Koi No Kaijitsu”, starts with a powerpop introduction a-la The Raspberries before the band shifts into old-school ska/rock-steady for the verses. The introduction and verse are repeated before the band shifts gear again with a Beatleesque pre-chorus and refrain. After the intro/verse/prechorus/refrain sequence is given a second go-round, an instrumental bridge with an R.E.M.-esque chord sequence, but played Beatles-style and flavored with some conservative use of phase-shifting – adds a further dimension to the proceedings. The three-part harmonies by Haruna, Tomomi and Mami are more than pleasant to listen to.
For those that never got the singles and didn’t choose to download them from iTunes, they all follow on the EP in their original order of release, and benefit from an even better mastering job than the original singles. For the curious and uninitiated, here’s what early American adopters of SCANDAL have been enjoying for the past few months:
“Space Ranger” starts with some ominous synthesizer drones before the rhythm section kicks in. The two guitars follow, along with an uncredited organist supplementing the guitar riffs, with the end result being a very catchy song very reminiscent of ZONE.
“Koi Moyo” is my personal favorite of the three original singles. Instead of emulating ZONE, SCANDAL seem to have found a sound almost entirely of their own making. The production recalls Husker Du circa Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey – indeed, the song itself sounds like how the Huskers would have sounded had Grant Hart played a straighter, more Tommy Lee-esque drum beat instead of his swinging style. Tomomi plays a very interesting, cliche-free bass line in the song’s introduction and instrumental tags, laying back to play only half-notes and whole notes during the verses and straight eighth-notes during the chorus. There’s no keyboards to be found, the three-part harmonies are tight, and Rina’s drums have a great wooden-room sound around them.
The EP’s closer, “Kagarou” kicks off with some Wire-sounding powerchords before a single-note synth line akin to early Devo adds its own icing to the rest of the introduction, with the rest of the song sounding like a guitar-heavy Elvis Costello & The Attractions (any keyboards beyond the occasional synth icing are pretty much obliterated by Haruna and Mami’s Stratocasters) and some of the lead vocals, especially during the first verse, recalling W.
Even if you already have the singles – either physically or from iTunes – Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal is a worthwhile purchase, especially as a physical CD, which I highly recommend as the packaging is pretty cool: An emulation of the Beatles’ Let It Be cover, with the CD packaged in a miniature gatefold album cover, complete with a Japanese-style plastic inner sleeve for the CD itself. (Yet another current CD that I would love to see come out as a 180-gram vinyl record! – Matador, Merge, and Saddle Creek, are you paying attention?) The girls of SCANDAL are apparently just as enamored of their American fanbase as the entire inner gatefold collage is dominated by live picks of the band from the same tour. Hopefully this will be a nice tideover until a true full-length LP from the quartet emerges.
Five out of five stars.
