ok city ok, エディ, アカシカ - Kichijoji Silver Elephant, May 19th

by graeme

Kichijoji is home to Iseya, probably the greatest yakitori restaurant in all of Tokyo (if not Japan), and it's not right to spend a Friday night in Kichijoji without first going there to fill up on cheap food and cheap beer. Unfortunately this meant that I didn't arrive at the venue on time and missed the first band on the bill. So, apologies to The Boston Liver, I will do my best to see you again sometime.

By the time we did get there, アカシカ (Acacica) were drawing to the end of their set. A four-piece fronted by a preternaturally tiny vocalist called Mayumi, Acacica made me wish I'd foregone the final beer and got my arse to the venue on time. I picked up a copy of the three-track EP they were selling at the show. Check back for a review in which I will try and write something more substantial than this and talk about something else other than the diminutive stature of the singer.


Unlike Acacica, エディ(Eddy) had me scribbling furiously in my notebook. There's a few sentences where I consider if it's possible to drink G&T through a straw and still retain a modicum of dignity. Then there's a fairly long mental meander about the bloke standing just in front of me who looked as if he'd read too much about Jean-Paul Sartre (rather than actually reading anything by Jean -Paul Sartre), and had me placing mental bets as to whether he would ever actually take a drag on the cigarette he was holding do preciously. Finally I was driven to wonder if the reason Eddy took it upon themselves to remind us of who they were after every song was because they knew how forgettable their set was. Eddy seem to have been struck by that affliction which is common among a lot of the bands I've seen here. As individuals they are clearly very able musicians, and as a band they are duck's arse tight, but they are completely lacking in any spark or edge that would make them much more interesting. Not only that, but all their songs seem to clock in at six or seven minutes, which for the kind of music they make (i.e fairly straight ahead indie-rock) is about three minutes too long. Sadly, the most memorable thing about their set was the questionnaire that they handed out to the audience afterwards, in which we had to choose our favourite song from their set and what we thought of the band. I went for the last one because that was the only honest answer I could give, and made some kind of non-committal comments to the other question.


ok city ok had no questionnaires, but their three minute blasts of Pete Townshend-esque guitar jiggery-pokery were a welcome tonic to the lumbering Eddy. Fronted by an exiled American, Kay Grace, ok city ok are an unabashedly old-school indie-rock band that any fan of The Replacements/Paul Westerberg, The Hold Steady et al would do well to seek out. They will be touring in the States and Canada next month - check their MySpace page for more details.