Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Ego-Wrappin' -- Psychoanalysis(サイコアナラシス)


This is an Osaka-based band that I found out purely by accident one night while I was couch-potatoing in front of my TV set on one of the Japanese music channels.  I had been just drinking down my coffee when I almost got my head blasted off by vocalist Yoshie Nakano's scream of "FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!"

What followed was this raucous anarchic mash of rockabilly and jazz (with some added post-punk) led by Nakano's sonic growly chewing of her own lyrics. I wish I could translate them but after looking at them, I would need to speak to Freud himself (very well-titled song, by the way).

Ego-Wrappin' was formed in 1996 with Yoshie Nakano and Masaki Mori(中納良恵・森雅樹)as the guitarist and co-songwriter of the duo. "Psychoanalysis" was not released as a single but was one of the tracks on their 2nd album, "Michishio no Romance"(満ち汐のロマンス....Tide Flow Romance), released in 2001.


I was definitely interested by Ego-Wrappin' just from this song alone so I bought the album. Nakano can go really deep and trashy with the voice or elegantly jazzy in the album's first track, "Katsute"かつて....Never Before). Their star was definitely rising in the early 2000s....a few more albums came out afterwards with regular frequency. They definitely appeared to have street cred just from how they looked; the video looks like it was shot in one of the many cramped live houses in the entertainment districts of either Tokyo or Osaka and the band had that look of unproduced bohemian NOSTALGIA! (inside joke there) In fact, I would say that Nakano in the video appeared like a don't-mess-with-me mama-san of a tiny watering hole in Shinjuku. (hey, she's from Osaka...she's tough).

Definitely one of the more original musical units I've come across.

Ego-Wrappin'--Michishio no Romance

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