Live: Fujiya & Miyagi + School of Seven Bells at LPR

Fujiya & Miyagi/School of Seven Bells
Le Poisson Rouge
Tuesday, February 17

I swear I got this bizarre neural disorder where everything I hear lately sounds like Flight of the Conchords. Hot Chip... those Lonely Island boys... and now Fujiya & Miyagi, the English dudes with the Japanese name doing deadpan electro-krautrock that I find simultaneously ridiculous (the fuck kind of chorus is "Vanilla strawberry knickerbocker glory"?) and enthralling, perhaps because they're always on the precipice of self-parody but never quite tip over -- seriously, just the slightest shove and this is "Too Many Dicks (On the Dancefloor)" territory.

Pressed to elaborate, I'd call these dudes "erotic twee," all their tunes bass-heavy, organ-augmented, and larded with breathy, nonchalant nonsense, like a word-salad remix of "Autumn Sweater" by LCD Soundsystem. Live they achieve a very pleasant sort of hypnosis, contrast and variety provided almost entirely by pure volume, visual appeal provided by a video backdrop that does for dice what Michel Gondry did for Legos. These guys don't particularly make you feel cool, but they do make you feel calm, which is preferable.

School of Seven Bells opened: the defected Secret Machines guy + the twin sisters from On! Air! Library! = vaguely tribal, ethereal droning that sounds like Yeasayer if you're being charitable, the Pop-Up Video theme on peyote if you are not. They're even more repetitive than F&M, to the point of stasis: They oughta steal the Secret Machines' drummer, too, or at least get some dice.