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.
it’s you.