Asobi Seksu – 'Hush' review
Read any Asobi Seksu interview and an insistence that “we’re not shoegaze” will crop up at some point, normally after being asked about the striking similarities in their music to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride et al. Their disowning of the tag is presumably to make sure they’re not seen as wholesale copyists of a 20-year-old genre and, ironically, to try and stop every journalist writing the same thing.
However, the contrary truth is that Asobi Seksu’s third long-player isn’t shoegaze, despite all its best efforts to appear as exactly that. Instead, Hush is an jangly pop album with some lovely melodies and singing that has then been given a dodgy production paint job. Sure, all the standard adjectives for the intended genre – “glacial”, “soaring”, “intense” etc – could quite justifiably crop up in this review, but scrape away the thin lacquer and you have an entirely different product.
Left in their native states, both Sing Tomorrow’s Praise and Sunshower, for example, would be charming twee-pop to rival Belle & Sebastian at their heart-melting best. But presented here, the added shimmers and washes negate any intimacy the songs may have once possessed, but don’t add enough to pull off the full stadium pomp. The only track that feels truly comfortable in its current state is lead single Me And Mary, a swift, no-nonsense blast of icy noise and crystalline vocals that, positioned in the record one from the end, is too little, too late.
Hush is a record of probably excellent pop songs, muddied by shoegaze-by-numbers production. Asobi Seksu are kind of right - they shouldn’t be shoegaze. But beware the band that doth protest too much – Hush is a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
5/10
