Time

AMG Review of Time

Alexey Eremenko
All Music Guide

The lineup of Monkey Majik is half Japanese and half Canadian, and it shows clearly on their 2008 effort. The music is guitar pop at heart, but the band performs it using two different approaches, one distinctly J-pop-based and the other obviously built on Western influences. About a half of the cuts on the album are towering piles of strings and piano lines that underscore and multiply the simple acoustic chord progressions barely heard beneath the majestic sappiness -- think Kobukuro or Angela Aki's 2006 album. Those songs are pleasant and set a mood, but don't do much more than that, because over-emphasizing typical melodies and not working with rhythm is not how you write a catchy song. However, after convincing the listener that things are going to stay this way throughout the album, much like they did on the band's previous album Sora Wa Marude, Monkey Majik take a sharp compositional turn. The group cuts down on strings like a re-forming emo kid cuts down on eye shadow, switches to English and begins to bring in neo-disco beats and indie pop guitar lines. As a result, some songs sound like the Infadels ("Goin' Places"), some remind of Beck ("Bicycle"), some have a sunny Belle & Sebastian vibe to them, and even the "Japanese" tunes get much more dynamic, thanks to a decrease in straightforward sentimentality and those disco and hip-hop touches in the rhythm. The distinct East-West division still reduces the cohesive feel (doesn't it always?), but on the upside, Time has something neat for a pretty wide variety of tastes.