Fujiya & Miyagi – Lightbulbs

Rating:

Fujiya & Miyagi have garnered interest all over the world for several years now, and to a certain extent, they’re a band that does deserve some of the accolades that have been thrown to them.  However, they have got to do something to mix it up before they grow entirely stale for music audiences across the globe.

On the opening track of their last album, Transparent Things, they threw “Ankle Injuries” in our face.  It’s throbbing bass line moved your feet, but not too much because, let’s face it, it’s not this band’s style. On Lightbulbs they offer us a very similar tune in “Knickerbocker.”  It’s a clever trick because you immediately think the band will fulfill our fantasies of a danceable album.

Unfortunately for us, we don’t ever get to reap the benefits of their aptitude. The rest of the album comes off extremely mundane, which, in all honesty, is quite along the same lines as their debut release.  Every single beat is enjoyable enough, but not a single one has anything out of the ordinary to offer up, which tends to make the entire album sound seamlessly boring.  For some reason they take the most straightforward approach to writing dance songs, and the more focused they get on this album, the less danceable the songs get.  It’s like we all started dancing together, but everyone got bored and went home with their significant others.

I could speak on the lyrics and their attributes, but it’s extremely hard to find a lot of redeemable qualities about the words across this album.  Each song has little differentiation in the lyrics themselves, and most repeat throughout the album.  It makes everything entirely too redundant, limiting the ability of the song to rise above the music.  For me, it’s hard to even recall a special song because each one ends up sounding like a repeat of its predecessor.

This album is shorter than the previous one, which does make the songs more listenable, if you are into this sort of streamlined dance music.  For all the promise that they have, they rarely come across as a band that has warranted our attention.  Throw out the single, and you would probably find an album that you played once through and then put on your iPod strictly for workout tunes.  It’s an album that easily sinks into the background of your subconscious, where it will likely stay for eternity.