Another Spazzy Day: CUSTOM NOISE’s “Candy Girl”

Ho hum, another day and another Japanese band working in jittery rock full of group shouts and stuttering guitar. Kyoto’s CUSTOM NOISE join the likes of Africaemo and fellow all-caps users NOKIES! in making manic music almost seemingly ready to explode into a thousand different directions with each passing second. Unlike the previous two acts…and way way different than all the other unmedicated masses trying to do this…CUSTOM NOISE actually do sort of blast off into entirely different sounds in the middle of a song. The band’s “new” version of the song “Candy Girl” sums this up – it starts innocently enough, all chipmunk-ey chanting giving way to math-rock precision and goofy call-and-response vocals. Then, though, CUSTOM NOISE reel themselves in and drop the singing, opting instead to have only one voice sing and then shout it out. And then…they swing one more time into a Modest Mouse circa The Lonesome Crowded West to close out the track. It’s actually all over the place, and not just sounding like it wants to be. Listen here.