You may remember that I mentioned TsuShiMaMiRe in my review of POLYSICS' "Oh! No! It's Heavy POLYSICK!" as being similar to POLYSICS but not electric. That was based on my recollections of them from their 2005 show in Seattle, as well as my recollections of the CD I bought at the live. ("Pregnant Fantasy," by the way.) At the time, they were a bizarre fusion of cuteness, hard rock, manic sounds, heavy bass, school girl vocals, unrefined sound, and death metal screaming. Although I was thrown off by them at first, they grew on me like a fungus. (In a good way. Maybe a wish-granting fungus.) When I heard that they were releasing their first major album, I was stoked but also a little worried that they'd changed since I'd last heard them. I mean, you can't go major without going mainstream, can you?Sadly, no, you can't. But TsuShiMaMiRe is still far enough off mainstream that you could consider them on the bank or, at worst, just getting their toes wet. "Giving Blood" is everything I wanted: all new songs, great vocals, strong bass, bizarre style combinations, cuteness, panicky tension.
I made myself promise that I wouldn't use the word "weird" when describing any of the songs because I didn't want to be repetitive, but you do need to realize that they're all weird, just at varying degrees. "Utsubyou" is classic TsuShiMaMiRe with Mari's wailing lyrics and Yayoi's crazy intense bass; "Sonata do Alarm" moves all over the place, going from upbeat with a pop-punk feel to surreal to desperate; "French Toast Rendezvous" is hard with a melodious chorus; "Doing Nothing" is desperate and tense with the drums and bass leveled way up and the vocals muffled and leveled way down. "Neko ha Hontou ha Yasashii Ikimono Ja Nai" is memorable for Mari's meowing. "Grapefruit Girl" and "Bryan" tend toward more mainstream with a straightforward pop-punk sound. My favorite songs were "Ramsheep" and "Kenketsu Song," which both start very chill and almost jazz-bluesy, then get harder and scarier over time, with "Kenketsu Song" including sections of Mari all but screaming and finally ending with her voice shaky and afraid.
Speaking of Mari, her voice is just as insane as it was six years ago. There are a lot of vocalists in the world, but I don't know of many that have the control and nuance that Mari does. She can pull off tooth-meltingly cute or death metal screaming, and I know of at least one song where she does both back and forth with no pause for several seconds, several times over the course of a song. (The quality is bad on the link, but you'll get the idea.) She's also good at emoting with her voice: she's just as good at happy and excited as she is at afraid, angry, nervous, desolate, and confused. Although it's clear that she probably hasn't been formally trained, I think she's got enough talent to make up for it.
Overall, the music is gruff and cute and unpretentious and rough around the edges, and I love it just the way it is. Although TsuShiMaMiRe tended a bit more toward plain-old punk on this album, there's still plenty of quirkiness to go around. I highly doubt that many of you reading this will love the album the way that I do, and you might not even like it, but you'd be remiss if you didn't at least give it a try.
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