By Danica Li
On first listen, you wouldn't think Fujiya and Miyagi were composed of a couple of mild-mannered British blokes. The name says Japanese, the influences say krautrock, but the music, defying all attempts at ethnic pidgeon-holing, just sounds weird.
Formed in 2000 after David Best (he's Fujiya) and Steve Lewis (and he's Miyagi) met warming benches at the local Sunday league football kick-around, the duo released their debut in 2002 before dropping abruptly off the screen for about half a decade. Then came Transparent Things in 2006, and, following that, effusive praise concerning the band's craft by Pitchfork and Mojo.
An irrepressible send-up of a popular children's refrain, "Collarbone" broke the band with some British radio airplay and corporate sponsorship (Miller Lite, Jaguar). Transparent Things - the group says it was named "after a Nabokov brain dump [novel] on the relationship between the past and the present" - won underground acclaim, but was otherwise ignored by the happily oblivious masses.
We can't say that latest album, Lightbulbs, released last year, is a leap, bound, or even weensy baby step away from the krautrock aesthetic - chock-full as it is of minimalist bass underpinnings, grooves that're thin on the melodicism but thick on the funk, and creepy, half-whispered enunciations that sound like frontman David Best's battling a deathly case of emphysema. The vocals are a band trademark - and curiously endearing after a few spins, like after-hours, gin-soaked kaoroke where all the participants are sloshed but still rasping gamely on.
Now, the group's continuing to tour Lightbulb stateside. Yeah, Fujiya and Miyagi are still singing about oddball things, like knickerbockers ("Knickerbockers"), pterodactyls ("Pterodactyls"), and dishwashers (in - wait for it - "Dishwashers"). And, yeah, these are the same songs that Best exalts as "beautifully observed anecdotes on romantic triumphs and disasters, heroes and villains, and the world at large" on the act's MySpace page. These guys - they've got some lofty ambitions.
FUJIYA AND MIYAGI
With Pop Levi and Project Jenny, Project Jan
Thurs/5, 9 p.m., $20
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
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