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My Way My Love
Post-punk runaway Yukio Murata reflects on coming home again
My Way My Love didn’t exactly mean to start their career as an export; it just happened that way. In 2000, the band sent its demo out worldwide, and the first takers were the Chicago-based Scratch and Sniff Records. By the time they put out their first full album in Japan last year, they had done six other recordings and toured twice in the US and Europe, where their irreverent and energetic noise rock drew comparisons to Sonic Youth.
Frontman Yukio Murata has no regrets about being picked late for the home team. “I guess our sound wasn’t too well-understood in Japan then,” says the singer and guitarist backstage before a recent show in Hokuriku. “Looking back, I think in the beginning ours was really an American indie-rock sound.” Like Murata’s favorite, early-’80s no wave band DNA, My Way My Love employs screechy guitars needled with digital effects and samples—the rhythmic slam of punk with the swagger and sneer turned down, and a chic dissonance like soured milk on ice.
The members of the band, who have always been into Western rock (bassist Dai Hiroe likes The Cure and drummer Takeshi Owaki The Flaming Lips), found that being overseas impacted their music. “At the beginning, we were more or less based in the United States, and then we eventually moved on to Europe. So naturally we were influenced by the places we were in,” Murata explains.
On their third full-length album, I’ll Cure You With Electricity, released April 15 on the Graveyard label, they mesh their grungier US indie influences with more UK-style melodies. Murata’s dirty, atonal guitar is surprisingly versatile, taking the record from angular post-punk anthem “Lemon” to the chipper love song “The New Music for New Days.” His punk vocals range from the ’90’s alt-rock of Gavin Rossdale to the spoken graffiti of Thurston Moore.
Originally from Hyogo, Murata moved to Tokyo in 1987 at age 18 to get into the music scene. Bored after a two-year stint, he went to work as a sushi chef in southern California, where he joined local bands. On his return, Murata, an avid soccer fan, started watching matches at an English pub. “The drummer came there too, and we’d drink together and talk about soccer and music and eventually we talked about starting up a band,” he recalls. A few years later, they would be playing a gig at Manchester United’s grounds before a game—one of the highlights of their UK tour.
For all the good times they had abroad, Murata and crew felt relief when they finally shelved their prodigal status, releasing their first EP in Japan in 2006. “It was kind of depressing not to have a record contract in our own country,” he says. “We can finally tell our families that we got a record deal in Japan.”
His experiences abroad gave Murata a renewed appreciation of the comforts of home. “The Japanese indie scene seems really well-off. I mean, you have the benefits of staff support and this certain environment… it’s like being a rock star, you’re really taken care of. In America and Europe, indie musicians have to do everything for themselves—they have to get their own tour van and set up their own gear, even design their own album covers. It’s ‘indie’ in the true sense.
“But in Japan they’re pampered—not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Murata says with an eye on his manager from Growing Up, an agency with a small stable of rock bands. “It’s just that overseas you don’t have everything put together, so bands really have to think for themselves and get creative. In Japan, you’ve got everything pre-prepared so you can do what you want to do right away, but your gray matter tends to go to waste, so you have to work to be genuine.”
Being genuine is one thing My Way My Love can now focus on without keeping one audience or another in mind. “Before, when we were introducing our music to one region at a time, it was as if we had to have different ideas for each place. But finally, we’ve got a release in Japan and all over the world at the same time, so it’s like we’re finally one band. It took a while.”
Shelter, May 28 and Unit, July 19. I’ll Cure You With Electricity is available on Graveyard. See concert listings (popular) for details.
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