YELLOW FEVER BLUES – The Spunks (Gearhead)
What sort of cross-cultural gumbo do you get when you mix loud guitar and lyrics about sex and Chinese food with a two-thirds Japanese punk band with an American bass player in deepest, 
darkest Brooklyn? Dunno but look out - I think it bites.
Yes folks, here’s another disc of explosive and dirty Nippon punk rock, in the style of Teengenerate and the Gimmies and with a distinctly acrid smell. With a bucketful of songs and no inclination to use the brake pedal, The Spunks deliver the expected. Two songs in there’s a declaration of intent of sorts in “#1”. You can take it as read that they don’t mean “number one” on anything resembling a commercial radio playlist, just in their own punk rock backyard. Which should be good enough for me and you.
There’s a dash of the Pistols (“Habanero Junkies” veers into “Anarchy”) and an almost inevitable crossover into Turbo ACs territory on a few other tunes. “Love and (Egg) Roll” is a cover of a song by labelmates Gitogito Hustler and Joan Jett’s leaned on for the vaguely funny “I Love Wok’n Roll”. The closing cover of Vince Taylor’s “Brand New Cadillac” (passed down via the Clash) does earlier versions justice.
The oral allusions of “Bedroom Stomp” and “Russian Roulette” make The Spunks either sound harder than a schoolboy in the stick book section of a sex shop with a pocketful of 50s, or like a bunch of frustrated mid-20s single blokes who spend way too much time on myspace, depending on your own interpretation. Me, I don’t think the messages matter than much when you’re spitting out vocals in Jinglish, and all the critics can take a note from a line in “Nothing (Like a Ham Sandwich)” if they’re going to ponder too deeply:
“Let me tell you something
“You’re fuckin’ nothing
“ALL TALK AND NO DEED”.
So there. Now you know – in case guitarist Hajime’s throat-shredding vocals or the CD tray photo of the band in silhouette with a flick-knife didn’t tell you.
There’s no concession to the pop side of punk and to be honest, you’ve probably heard a lot of this before. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold up nicely in its own leather-jacketed right, given the right mood/a nose-full of something cheap/a cold beer (strike out whichever doesn’t apply.) It’s not Easy Listening Music by any stretch, but then that’s not what you were expecting. –
The Barman
3/4