Japanther
Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt
(Wantage USA)

Have I gotten old, or is it just Japanther? For a while there in the early '00s, when the Brooklyn bass and drums duo were touring relentlessly (nine times in two years), they seemed like the most exciting punk band in the country—like Lightning Bolt only with sing-along pop songs. In 2007, I even ranked Skuffed Up My Huffy as one of my top 10 albums of the year in the Pazz & Jop critics poll. Although in retrospect, while Huffy was a fine album, I think that placement was more like the belated Oscar award for a less-than-phenomenal film really meant to honor an entire career. Which is just to say that since their peak—2003 to 2005's run of Dump the Body in Rikki Lake, The Operating Manual for Life on Earth EP, and Master of Pigeons—Japanther have been coasting on their bikes rather than shredding, with diminishing returns.

Consider new album Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt, out on Montana's Wantage USA, the label of Japanther drummer Ian Vanek's older brother Josh. Twenty-one of its thirty-seven minutes are given over to two tracks of ambient percussion and pseudo-shamanic poetry from executive producer and punk (is dead) legend Penny Rimbaud—an odd treat for Crass fans, perhaps, but maybe this should've been billed as a split EP. Japanther stuff seven songs (including the rousing Spank Rock cameo "Radical Businessman," with its chant of "One, two, three, four/Fuck the cops") as well as an intro and outro into the remaining 16 minutes. A few of these songs—especially the opening one-two of "Bumpin' Rap Tapes" and "Um Like Yer Smile Is Totally Ruling Me," with its mission statement, "To me punk rock means dirt/It means bikes not cars/To me it means being sad when you can't see the stars/At night," spat in the face of Clear Channel billboards—are as anthemic as anything the band have done, but it just doesn't sound anywhere as urgent or explosive. Fuck it, it's probably just me.

This article has been updated since its original publication.