Oreskaband - Ore Album Review

Oreskaband
Ore
Album Review

When this album plopped onto my mat I uttered three words. The first was "what", the third was "Dickens" and the second was "the." The album artwork is like Rivers Cuomo's wildest dream, the six members of the band, all Japanese teenage girls, dressed in school uniforms, giving v-signs. Hmm. In the sleeve, I was presented with a myriad of biographical details about the band, I now know what instruments they play, that not one of them is over eighteen, and what blood type they all are. Yes. So if any of you go in for some kind of surgical procedure, or have an accident, and only the blood of a teenage girl from Japan who can play the trombone will do for a transfusion, then get in touch and I'll sort you out.

Anyway, the music. Well, I know not what to make of it. Six short, sugar rush ska songs. Ska. A genre usually reserved nowadays for dodgy filler on indie albums, and middle-aged men with bulldogs tattooed on their scalps, has made the jump to Japan. With bewildering results.

The songs have titles like "Yeah! Ska Dance" and are, for the most part, enormous fun, like The Specials re-imagined by Disney. Speaking of which, an unfeasibly kitschy rendition of Coventry's finest's "Monkey Man" is included on here, the only track with English lyrics.

There's a good chance that Oreskaband will gain a cult following, but probably for the same reason that Davids Hasselhoff and Dickinson, have cult followings, for ironic kitsch value.

If you want a funny, unshakably perplexing album, then buy this.

Ben Davis