Wasabi Peace: “Like, Dude”

DNRC070 | LP | 2010 | DELETED

Formed by brother-sister act Meiko and Kenji Kawabata in order to challenge the common Western view that Japanese music is all about screaming, hari-kiri and feeling slightly “kooky” onstage, Wasabi Peace delivered this steaming collectiion of nose-jam and incendiary riot police uniforms in the death summer of 2010, when it seemed as if the whole world had gone blarney. Featuring crisp production (thanks to Clint Bo Dean at the t-shirt desk), a killer rhythm section (sadly absent on Bo Dean’s own deplorable solo album) and a knack for songwriting (see previous comment in brackets (and also the one before that)), “Like, Dude” shimmers with the hope that perhaps one day DNRC will hit the black, in terms of its shoddy accounts section as well as its failure to release a single record on vinyl. While lead single “Shoot the Stinger” may have been topical back in 2006 when Wasabi Peace were learning their craft on the gruelling Melbourne alternative radio circuit, its political punch has been softened on the album version, with Meiko’s vocal style more hanky-panky than Al Gore. The other ten album tracks (also released sequentially as singles in the Phillipines, to test Asian audiences’ reactions to the band) are also suitably restrained, with the excption of incendiary streaker and album closer “Kill Bill Clinton”, whose intent and lyrical content should be obvious, even to Al Gore’s notoriously illiberal wife, Tipper. Problems would continue to haunt Wasabi Peace, however, and the brief war between Japan and Korea that closed off 2010 would, sadly, lead to the deletion of all of their singles and albums the following year, in accordance with UN Resolution 2011-a, prohibiting the distribution of DNRC “propaganda”, a shamefully inadequate response to the war itself, not to mention the afore-mentioned Western cliche. Touche.