Fujiya & Miyagi

Lightbulbs

Deaf Dumb & Blind

 
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Like a fat, ripe strawberry dipped in dark chocolate, Fujiya & Miyagi’s choice lyrics take on a seductive new meaning when combined with the atmospheric, ambient quality of their music.

Lightbulbs, the third album from this Brighton, England, duo-turned-quartet, takes what might at first song seem to be a light album packed with poppy, throwback dance beats and spins it into a counterintuitive seduction that you never guessed was coming. The outright sexiness of the vocals, combined with the music’s dreamy tone, may find more than one listener blushing or perhaps causing them to wonder – without being able be to pin down precisely why – “Is ’pterodactyl‘ a dirty word?”  How you relate to this album may reveal much about how you relate to the temptation in general: does it hook you, or can you force yourself turn it away?

Sensuality drips from even the most unlikely pores of this album, and you may find yourself checking over your shoulder, as if to make sure you aren’t doing something wrong just for listening.  The sultry way that lead vocalist David Best uses his voice nostalgically calls to mind all of the slinkiness of INXS’ Michael Hutchence (minus the sloppy self-destructiveness). Pop the cork on what might seem like little more than a party album and it aerates like a complex wine – and offers as much giddy fun to be had.

Listen and you’ll discover hints of the obvious – reminiscences of Krautrock duo Neu! – along with touches you didn’t expect.  There are likenesses to Depeche Mode’s smoky darkness on “Pickpocket”. There’s a  mellowed, less hard-hittingly anthemic !!! sound on tracks such as “Knickerbocker” and “Sore Thumb.” Rounding it off for good measure, tracks “Goosebumps” and “Hundreds & Thousands” are a refreshing blast of fresh Air to the ears – dreamy, dramatic, cross-continental sounding , all at the same time. 

Part of the fun of  Lightbulbs lies precisely in how it defies what you may expect when entering into it. It is alluring without taking itself too seriously – in fact, its appeal seems to come partly from the fact that it doesn’t try too hard to sell or explain itself.  “Dishwasher,” the closest that Fujiya & Miyagi come to a love song on this album, somehow turns the phrase: “Just look inside your encyclopedia”, into such an effortless innuendo that you never can be truly certain whether it was one in the first place.  The lyrics have such a tendency to slip in meanings you aren’t quite sure you heard that after several listens, you might begin to feel like the subject of “An American Girl in Italy”. 

And while it’s both fun and danceable, Lightbulbs is not easily classified as just another dance album.  After all, there is an equally difficult-to-identify sense of tragedy expressed in songs such as the album’s title track.  Without being overtly narrative, ”Lightbulbs” seems to contain the vague thread of a story – one that’s easy to imagine has fast-forwarded the outcome of the album’s seduction three or four years into the future.  The mundane has crept in and brought along with it a dreadful sense of stagnancy.  The last track is amorphous and sadly detached, and it eerily rounds off the experience with the repeated chant: “If today is the same as yesterday / Tomorrow will be the same as today”.

Listeners, be warned. The very same property of vagueness running throughout Lightbulbs could tell you much more about yourself than it tells you about the music.  Is “pterodactyl” a dirty word? Lucky for us, Fujiya & Miyagi have given just cause to raise our eyebrows and wonder.

– Rebekah Brown