Lo-fi garage / art punk, grainy vocals and more-fuzzy-than-noisy guitars and a silly/serious skaterboy sensibility. This is the music you wish you could have made with your next-door neighbours in, like, seventh grade. Even the vocals are... nasal and shouted. Reminds me of Bearsuit and Math the Band and other fun-as-fuck bands you’ve never heard of. Japanther are Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly -- whatever, there are totally chick vocals on this record (it’s Anita Sparrows of the Soviettes), and there’s all sorts of arty co-op collab going on, from the random digi samples to the strained “city at night” poetry spoken over and under. How the hell these kids found each other at the rhymes-with-brat Institute is probably none of my business either. (Read: hipsters of the world...) Though: What hey, they actually do use telephones as microphones. I have a witness.

try: 7, 1/10, 5, 3
FCC: 8, 9

**1. pure fun pop-punk. dueling boy/girl vocals. drums + fuzz guitar + what sounds like a toy keyboard. most definitely about moping over a girl.
2. bookended ridiculous voice-overs that belong in a gregg araki movie. in the middle: fast southern-culture-on-the-skids type vocal stylings. quick-hit drums and noise guitar. “i think you think we’re cool”.
*3. poppy, fuzzy, beach boys on blow ditty about girls, corporate america, and surfing. lots of ‘ahh’s. held-note chorus: “still alii-iii-iii-iii-iiive”. random jazzy outro. okay, kids.
4. begins & ends with digi samples. straight-ahead atonal verses with rushed lyric runs.
*5. fuzzy synth pop + airy shoegaze vocals. totally boppy & cool. i love when the sound randomly drops in and out.
6. starts with a pushy syncopated beat & spoken samples from... police academy 5?! at :45, cuts to a lazy sing-songy high school crush song. piano is involved.
**7. fucking genius! happy boppy fast-paced goodness. singalong chorus that sounds like splitskies between a 60s girl beach band and... j-pop?! vamps “what do what do i what do what do i do with you?” not like i first heard this on the left end or anything. as if.
8. FCC “shit” / “fuck” deep vocal groove, bitty synth bass, sparse instrumentation... and then it picks up and breaks open. overarch poetry near the end.
9. FCC “fuck” starts with a spoken sample. harder-edge deep grain fast punk and rapid vocals. “we don’t give a fuck what you write on the internet!” too bad about the FCC, this rocks.
*10. supa-stripped down acoustic female-vox version of the first track. starts soft/sweet, gets a tinge louder and snarly. high school heartbreak to the teeth.