Fake Can Be Just as Good＜限定盤＞

2007年発表の『23』で新しいシューゲイザー/ドリームポップの音を生み出し、評価とセールスを炸裂させたUSインディレジェンドBLONDE REDHEAD。
彼らはその10年前にも本作『FAKE CAN BE JUST AS GOOD』という名盤をインディの鏡であるTOUCH AND GOからリリースしていました...!
かのクラシック『NO NEW YORK』に名を連ねるバンド達への強烈な渇望、1997年本作発表時に全米を沸騰させていたSHELLAC、FUGAZI等を意識したバンドアンサンブルは、どこを聴いてもUSアンダーグラウンドへのアプローチと愛に溢れています。どんなに時が経っても色褪せない不変で不穏な音の宝庫の中で、聴けるギターのソリッドさは一級品!ここで撒き散らされた暴力的だけど切なさも感じさせる音の破片達は、数年後YEAH YEAH YEAHSが拾って全米を震撼させるのでした。

It seems like New York trio Blonde Redhead have been dogged with Sonic Youth comparisons since the day they formed years ago, taking their name from an old song by No New York faves DNA. Such yakking only grew louder when the group, then a quartet, signed with Steve Shelley's Smells Like label in 1994 for a pair of LPs, and then let the Sonic Youth drummer produce them. Three years down the road, it's a resemblance still firmly in place on Fake Can Be Just as Good, despite the group employing producer John Goodmanson and switching labels to Chicago's venerable, powerful Touch & Go. But if this stubborn outfit of two handsome Italian-Americans and a pretty Japanese-American doesn't care about being branded copycats, and it seems they don't, then neither should anyone else. Improving with each release, the solid, crashing duo of guitarists (and alternating singers) Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace may borrow an ethic, an anti-pop stance, and atonal tension that's super-familiar, but the clean sound, direct attack, and straightforward, tense delivery are all their own. Moreover, there's plenty of room for further exploration in these dark, forbidding, tempest-ridden post-punk seas. In fact, when Makino and Pace get cold, claustrophobic, weird, wired, and chilling (with help from borrowed Unwound bassist Vern Rumsey) is when they also nearly explode in deep undercurrents: see the best things here, the quietly terrified "Symphony of Treble" and "Bipolar." And unlike 95 percent of all bands based on the New York noise tradition, Blonde Redhead never just grind like nails to chalkboards -- their well-produced sound is never annoying or unpleasant -- nor forget that music is supposed to have hooks, no matter how much it eschews obvious pop melodic conventions. Far from mere proteges of any band or scene, Blonde Redhead are a unique sub-branch all their own on a fertile tree. ~ Jack Rabid