Adventure

If you were hoping that Jad Fair and his musical partners in Half Japanese were going to pay homage to Televisions underappreciated second LP with their 2025 album Adventure, well, youre out of luck. The adventure Fair wants to sing about is life, and hes clearly a happy man at the age of 71, with plenty to say about the joys of love, the pleasures of a sunny day, and the power of positive thinking, and with the passage of time, he only becomes more credible as a font of good vibes. Half Japanese has also matured into a band that can match his sunny mood, as songs like "Step On Up" and "Beyond Compare" are full to bursting with melodic hooks, "The Summer of Love" sounds like a forgotten gem of the folk-rock era, and "Lemonade Sunset" and "Magnificent" come within a stones throw of yacht rock. The musicians -- John Sluggett on guitar, piano, and bass; Euan Hinshelwood on guitar, sax, harmonica, and keyboards; Mick Hobbs on guitar; and Gilles-Vincent Rieder on drums and percussion -- have the skill to make Fairs tunes sound as good as they deserve, and the willingness to take creative risks, as they step into enthusiastic chaos on the title track and explore the internal twists and turns of "Thats Fate." Its good to know Half Japanese can still dive into the noisy maelstrom of their earliest recordings, and on Adventure, it sounds like a creative choice, not the work of folks who arent sure how to play more conventionally. Nearly 50 years into their career, it must be gratifying to Fair that he can easily have it both ways. Jason Willett also produced the album, and he captures this band with an unfussy clarity that makes the many facets of this music audible, while also feeling spontaneous and full of life. After decades of sounding like he was stuck in musical adolescence (as effective as it may have been), Jad Fair has found bliss in maturity since he revived Half Japanese with 2014s Overjoyed, and Adventure is another chapter in what has become an improbably delightful late-career renaissance for these pioneering underground heroes. ~ Mark Deming