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"So punchy and melodically sound, it might as well have been played by a spacesuit-clad Dismemberment Plan. 'Structures' is robotic without sounding sterile, and rolled up tightly without seeming the least bit fishy." "Sushirobo throw the gauntlet to garage bands who see the future as filled with three chords, a bridge and a chorus." "Their genius for melding woozy out-of-whack guitars, wobbly, slightly bent melodic hooks, and rigid, metronomic beats, quirky addictive, caffeinated angle-pop from another dimension." "A sharp response to those who think indie rock isn't capable of a few new tricks." "Packed with atmospheric warped guitar sounds that would provide the perfect soundtrack to Logan's jog. " "Sushirobo continue to create one of the most seamless mixes of electronic and traditional instruments, where neither force dominates nor feels out of place." "(The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo) is easily one of the best records I've heard this year." "The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo is a fantastic, heady album better experienced than explained."
“Give this Seattle quartet a spot on your dance card.”
-- LA Weekly “An intelligent but infectious brew of groovy, funk-inducing bass lines and woozy, warped guitar riffs, and run with it, making a beeline for even headier, experimental electronica territory.” “Just when your jaded ears lead you to believe that all indie rock bands are starting to sound alike, along comes Seattle's Sushirobo to set you straight.” “Brave new music Drawing inspiration from late 1970s art punk, Sushirobo puts a modern twist in its sound by favoring electronic improvisations.” -"The disc bursts with instantly catchy songs enhanced by noises that evoke rhinos, submarines, Star Trek gadgets, exotic birds and even a robot belching after a sushi meal."
Sushirobo's art-punk electropop is angular, dissonant and jittery and menacing, a soundtrack for your inner serial stalker." "Takes listeners on an aural head-spin. Sushirobo unites the future and past flawlessly." "The combination of willing guitar experimentation and thick rhythmic hooks, the band has carved out a nice little nitch in the music world. Not falling in line with the rock revival that is start to come to plague status, and not heaped on the pile of avant-garde wankery, the album truly stands by itself." "Wacked-out robo-rock that's every bit as odd and alluring as Enon's "Believo!" or Brainiac's back catalog." "Sushirobo specializes in a decidedly otherworldly brand of music. Doesn't so much play as it floats by on a cloud of keening guitar effects, synth gurgles, and bubbly basslines." "The most absorbing passion play you'll ever hear." "The results are remarkable, a postcard from outer space, a disco dance, a rock band." "Sushirobo can be your salvation as their sound is intended to blast you light years away from the water logged traditional sound. "This is a record that needs to be in your collection. " "Guitars hopscotch from broken chords to effects-tweaked leads that sound like flying-saucer transmissions. There is a weird, fantastically idiosyncratic mind at work here. Open yours before entering." "The band creates a record full of moving sounds and visions that will leave you craving more." "A refreshingly intoxicating mish mash of Pink Floyd-esque psychedelia and 70's stadium rock tossed in with copious spurts of lo-fi electronic obfuscation." "Sushirobo expertly fuses the mechanical aspects of new wave with the unrelenting power of post-punk rock. This Seattle-born group's debut album is a grand unification of experimental yearnings and pop sensibilities." "It's just the sheer, undeniable level of talent that oozes forth on all levels of Sushirobo that makes them so very worth your time. " "This is a fantastic venture into the musical possibilities of the beyond." "Marries the avant garde of 70s art rock with the modern fascination with machines and electronics." "This band's guitars are particularly intriguing. The vocals kick ass and the production is astounding. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (Rating: 5+++)" THE COMPLETE REVIEWS
 Rockpile, Nov 2003 At first glance it may seem like just another indie rock band from Seattle with a quirky name. Though after listening to the band's sophomore release, The Light Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo, this Rainy City quartet seems to have crafted an album of, dare I say, indie-rock excellence? With dozens of comparisons to the dearly departed Dismemberment Plan, it is undeniable Sushirobo is one of the few bands existing under today's pop-culture radar producing extremely rocking, funk-driven music. Frontman Arthur Roberts credits the group's rhythm section for supplying the rumpshaking foundation. "For some reason, the funk just kinda comes out of them," he laughs. At 34, and on the cusp of leaving bachelorhood behind, Roberts comes across as thoughtful and honest. Especially when it comes to Sushirobo's touring schedule. While he says the band is keeping its options open, he candidly notes if nothing's doing soon, he's going back for another semester of school. Having enrolled himself in the University of Washington, Roberts hopes to acquire a degree in electrical engineering so as to customize his guitars and learn how to build ridiculous effects pedals. By way of screaming wah-wah pedals or tweaked out flangers, Sushirobo achieves an exceptional sound compared to the all-too-often uniform sound of would-be competitors. With a rhythm section that could keep all of Ibiza moving, and Roberts' uncanny vocals weaving amongst intricately melodic guitar arrangements, Sushirobo has definitely made its calling card with The Light Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo.
PEDALS TO THE METTLE: Sushirobo Get Skewed Bands that cite kraut-rock immortals Can and electronic-rock pioneers Silver Apples as primary influences don't materialize every day. So when one does, pay close attention. Meet Sushirobo, a Seattle quartet that worships the abovementioned artists, yet feels like a musical misfit in this city. Sushirobo came together in 1999 when vocalist/guitarist Arthur Roberts met future members of Spyglass--Clay Martin (bass) and Barry Shaw (drums)--at informal jam sessions in his Queen Anne pad. (Guitarist Dave Einmo joined shortly thereafter.) Roberts had played bass with a notable power-pop band, which recorded big-selling albums for Geffen in the early '90s, as well as with Peach. He'd hoarded tons of gear throughout that decade, and he damn well was going to use it in this new project ("We have a U-Haul truck devoted solely to our effects when we go to gigs," quips Shaw). "We were trying to break away from the ways we were used to playing," says Roberts. "We had played a lot of classic-rock-meets-alternative-rock stuff and we were getting so sick of guitar solos, bands where the guitarist plays all the time. So we started playing real spaciously, getting strange tones. Can was the model band for those days. We would tape everything, listen back, and find the cool parts. We never really wrote any songs." Sushirobo (named after a Vancouver restaurant where robots make sushi) debuted in 2000 with the Action Causes More Trouble Than Thought EP on Martin and Einmo's newly formed Pattern 25 Records. That disc and the band's first album, Drawings and Garbage Structures (2002), highlight Sushirobo's piquant retro-futurist aesthetic. Roberts and Einmo splatter the CDs' concise, spiky pop songs with an armada of guitar effects while the rhythm section adds torque and punch to the spacy atmospheres. Early XTC and Devo influences raise their quirky heads, but never too blatantly. Einmo admits the impact of "some art-punk bands of the '70s. But at the same time, we're exploring electronic sounds via guitar effects that sort of bring it into a more futuristic sound. Some of the cars of the '50s, that ferry boat that's still sitting out in Lake Union--those ideas of what the future was going to be like that weren't quite right. That's what the sounds we try to create sound like." "Early on, Arthur said, 'Everything you know about classic rock, Beatles-esque pop, R&B--don't play to those instincts,'" Martin recalls. "'Play in a more machine-oriented way.' That's what we try to do." Sushirobo also hail the benefits of restraint, repetition, and avoiding "that dialed-in chunky guitar tone" blighting the airwaves and your local bar. Oh, and they like effects pedals--beaucoup effects pedals. "The tones we use are as important as the melodies we're using," says Einmo. "It has a much more lasting impact, having those fucked-up tones. Experimenting with different guitar effects makes the melodies interesting." You can hear what he means on Sushirobo's excellent second album, The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo (out September 16). Produced with brilliant clarity by Gary Reynolds and the band at Electrokitty Recording, the disc bursts with instantly catchy songs enhanced by noises that evoke rhinos, submarines, Star Trek gadgets, exotic birds, and even a robot belching after a sushi meal. "All of us are really into surprises," claims Einmo. "That's what gets me so excited about the new record. There's a sense of randomness and surprise. We limited our options up front by recording most of it live and doing it in an improv situation instead of spending eight months bashing all the parts out." The method's paid off. Sushirobo is one of the few rock groups to excite this jaded old electronic-music head in 2003. When asked what sort of audience the band attracts, Shaw replies, "It's mainly sound guys in clubs and recording engineers who respond to our music." Roberts notes the high percentage of record-store clerks in Sushirobo's crowds, too. "We get a lot of people who come up to us after a show and say, 'Tuxedomoon! I totally see it now!' As if we're all in on a big secret together. We get a lot of those obsessive types. And slender, attractive women," he hastens to add. Oddly enough, those obsessive types at MTV took a shine to Sushirobo, too: Songs off Drawings regularly appear on the channel's Road Rules and The Real World--which brings in dozens of dollars a year, Martin boasts. All of which likely goes to buying more effects pedals. LA Weekly, 7/23/29 Sushirobo at the Silverlake Lounge. Yes, !!! at the Henry Fonda is stiff competition for your entertainment dollar, but give this less-hipster-approved Seattle quartet a spot on your dance card, if Brooklyn’s not your beat, or even if it is. Suppose one of the numberless bands currently name-checking krautrock and U.K. post-punk could actually play funk; they might turn out something like 2003’s The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo. Succinct vocal hooks aside, Sushirobo are less a song band than a rhythm section (Clay Martin and Barry Shaw) studded with twitchy, often detuned guitar intrusions from front man Arthur Roberts (ex-Posies) and Dave Einmo. Unlike many of their peers, this outfit know that funk is allowed to relax once in a while: “Organ Donor” and the Steve-Miller-goes-dub “Watch You” are aimed at your feet, to be sure, but their assured, unfrenzied groove is designed to produce a warm glow, not a desperate flop sweat. (Franklin Bruno)
The Onion: Why should anyone buy your record? Arthur Roberts (guitars/vocals): [submitted via e-mail] That's obvious: because you've been listening to indie rock for years and are finally growing weary of thrift-store ennui and guitar solos. You want something a little more fun and not so self-absorbed, and you'd like it to be weird and full of strange sounds and a little funky but not boring experimental-snob stuff and certainly not performed on a laptop, and you're promising yourself that the next time you go to a show, you're not going to just stand there nodding your head, but you might sort of twitch in place and jump up and down, or maybe drunkenly knock into other people, or maybe even spaz-dance for the first time since you turned 21. O: Do you think your record will help people? AR: That's easy: Listening to the clean, minimalist sounds of Sushirobo for just 38 minutes a day will bring an invigorating sense of clarity and purpose to your mind. O: Do you think your record could save lives? AR: Yes. In the event that one's windpipe was obstructed and one was unable to breathe, one could use The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo to perform a tracheotomy upon oneself. O:Is this record your ticket to heaven? AR: No, and Sushirobo does not assume any responsibility for listeners who find their souls being cleansed in the fires of hell. Sushirobo's newest album is titled The Light-Fingered Feeling Of Sushirobo. (Buy It!)
Denver Post, 7/23/2004 Space Rock Rocks Special to The Post Just when your jaded ears lead you to believe that all indie rock bands are starting to sound alike, along comes Seattle's Sushirobo to set you straight. I'll certainly be in the audience tonight at the Hi-Dive, eager to see if their live show is anywhere near as refreshing as their latest release, "The Lighthearted Feeling of Sushirobo." On paper, the quartet seems like your average rock band: Arthur Roberts on vocals, Dave Einmo on guitar, Clay Martin on bass and Barry Shaw on drums. But pop in the disc and prepare for a pleasant surprise. The four create psychedelic space rock, and the album is a collection of inspired, glitchy sounds and catchy melodies. They love guitar effects but eschew the modern laptop versions in favor of analog effects pedals. Fuzzy bass lines, eerie melodies and off-kilter vocals add dimension to their trippy rumblings, but sharp lyrics and rhythmic hooks keep the strangeness in check. Songs like "Last Call" are plucky, funky and danceable. "Organ Donor" goes off on a noisy, lo-fi jaunt, and "Shiva the Destroyer" tells a tale of ex-girlfriend angst that perfectly fits the music's moody funk. Let's hope the live show doesn't burst my love-this-band bubble. Either way, this one will certainly stay in the CD player rotation for weeks to come. --Kat Valentine Sushirobo, tonight at the Hi-Dive with Evaluation and Manos. 7 S. Broadway, 9 p.m., 720-570-4500.
The Examiner (San Francisco) 7/29/2001 Sushirobo with The Flight Orchestra The comparisons between Sushirobo frontman Arthur Roberts and John McCrea of Cake were inevitable. The two share a similar, deadpan half-rap/half-sing style. But the Seattle foursome take Cake's quirky indie-pop sound, an intelligent but infectious brew of groovy, funk-inducing bass lines and woozy, warped guitar riffs, and run with it, making a beeline for even headier, experimental electronica territory. Sushirobo is on the road supporting its latest release, "The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo" (Pattern 25 Records). Read more at www.sushirobo.com. 8 p.m. Sunday at Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 4th St., San Francisco. -- Bill Picture
Pitchfork Media Daily News 7/19/2004 Sushirobo Tour the West You'll pay for the whole seat-- but you'll only need THE EDGE Miles Barger reports: Run for cover!!>>!%!!!!! The fiendish monster that is Sushirobo is coming for your town! After epic battles with Mothra, Godzilla, and King Geedorah, Sushirobo will be making an appearance on the skyscraper nearest you in an epic musical beatdown the likes of which have never been witnessed by my non-Japanese eyes! And it's all happening SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!! (Day may vary; check listing below.) This just in: Sushirobo isn't really a Japanese B-movie monster. Rather, they are a musical quartet hailing from Seattle. Not as exciting, perhaps, but definitely more germane to these pages. The band's most recent release, The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo, was released in October 2003 on Pattern 25 Records and has done moderately well for itself, making it all the way to #11 on the CMJ Radio Add charts. The band, which was nominated for Seattle Weekly's 2004 Music Awards Best Rock/Pop Band honor, cites modern electronic experimentation and art-punk as its core influences, and they'll be displaying these influences in all their glory on this tour. SUNDAY!: The Oregonian Nightcrawler Friday, July 16, 2004 By JOCELYN MARSHALL Brave new music Drawing inspiration from late 1970s art punk, Sushirobo puts a modern twist in its sound by favoring electronic improvisations. The Seattle group has been around since 2000, experimenting with different sounds in creating a futuristic indie-rock style. Working within the traditional four-piece rock format, the group still finds a way of inventing new psychedelic post-punk tunes. The title of the new album, "The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo," sums it up. 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sabala's at Mt. Tabor, 4811 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.; $7.
The Fresno Bee (Updated Friday, July 30, 2004, 6:33 AM) Band geeks get their day in the sun Sushirobo dispels the dreary image of Seattle music. By Mike Osegueda Think music from Seattle, and Kurt Cobain and grunge come to mind immediately. That's just the way it is -- and probably how it always will be. It's hard to escape that all-consuming image of Seattle's music scene. But Sushirobo is trying. "For a decade in the post-Seattle boom, it was so dreary," says Arthur Roberts, the lead vocalist/guitarist of Sushirobo. "It was against these unspoken rules to do anything for fun or entertainment value. Instead, everything had to be cathartic. Now everything seems to be a lot more colorful and a lot more adventurous." Adventurous is right, at least as far as Sushirobo is concerned. Like the name suggests, the music is raw and experimental with electro-rock influences. The band sprang up during an era of guitar-driven indie rock with singer/songwriters using their lyric book as a confession booth. Sushirobo's approach? Don't be so serious. Don't be contrived. The group creates songs by recording jam sessions, reviewing the tapes and putting the good ideas together into songs. "I stopped being Leonard Cohen," Roberts says, "and that just made everything easy." Sushirobo performs at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Royal 8 Billiards in Madera. Tickets cost $5.
Daily Aztec (San Diego) 3/11/2004 The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo Kinda like: The Dismemberment Plan, Smart Went Crazy Sushirobo is one of the worst names a band could possibly come up with. Once you get past that, however, the unfortunately monikered Seattle band is quite an enjoyable quirky bunch. Mixing weird sound effects with post-punk guitars, Sushirobo comes off sounding like a more mild-mannered cousin to The Dismemberment Plan, with some sci-fi influences thrown in. On its debut, The Light-Fingered Feeling Of Sushirobo, the band keeps a steady groove throughout, whilst dropping references to Hinduism and pop culture trends. Feeling is a strong debut from a band that shows potential of great things to come. If only they had the sense to change their name. --Jeff Terich
Denver Post, 7/23/2004 buzzworthy I got them old punk art blues By Anne Lynn Special to DenverPost.com Friday, July 23 Q: How many old-school punks does it take to change a light bulb? A: You wouldn’t know. You weren’t effing THERE, man. As much as that genre fits snuggly into the butt of many, many jokes, the spirit is still alive and well in D-town. Seattle's Sushirobo, a band that describes itself as “Inspired by the art-punk bands of the late '70s/early '80s as well as more modern electronic experimentation, creates retro futuristic, jet-fueled music for analog robots.” That in itself is reason to go. Also, can you add the following quotes to the “A Few Highlights Section” at the top of the Sushi review page. Add these right above the Campus Circle quote: “Give this Seattle quartet a spot on your dance card.”
They've even learned some useful phrases in English: "Rat or Mole?" asks the title of the album's standout track, a number that encapsulates their genius for melding woozy out-of-whack guitars, wobbly, slightly bent melodic hooks, and rigid, metronomic beats. Just imagine Pink Flag or Chairs Missing performed by aliens. This is quirky addictive, caffeinated angle-pop from another dimension .
indieworkshop Seattle, for the last ten years, has been considered a hot bed of new music. Regardless if this has been true over the past handful of years, it still remains on the top of the list of cities to watch. Being the home to labels such as Jade Tree and K Records helps keep the city permanently fixed towards the top, but it’s bands like SushiRobo that bring credit to such lofty placement. This four piece, with the release of their second album, are helping to take down the shroud of pretense covering the city, and bring it back to everyone’s music roots… rock. While their new album, “The Light Fingered Feeling of SushiRobo”, has been touted as being experimental, the band is heavily rooted in balls out rock and roll. The combination of willing guitar experimentation and thick rhythmic hooks, the band has carved out a nice little nitch in the music world. Not falling in line with the rock revival that is start to come to plague status, and not heaped on the pile of avant-garde wankery, the album truly stands by itself. I recently called Arthur Roberts, the headman for the group. I chatted him up before he sat down to a quiet meal with his wife at their home… but that’s not what Arthur would like you to believe (…you’ll understand when you read the interview.) Jake Haselman - You guys don’t seem to be overly concerned with writing pop songs, in the typical sense of the word, and I heard most of your songs for this album came out of jam sessions… is it more just our of fun? Arthur Roberts - Yea, absolutely. Well, I don’t know if “fun” is the right way to put it… but where inspiration lies. We’ll jam until we find something that sounds good. And it probably sounds good to us because it meets subliminal pop requirements. But for whatever reason, things will suddenly start clicking after a whole bunch of… searching, searching, searching, nothing happens. Then at that moment, “ok, we found something… we like this hook, this groove, this sound.” And that’s what we build on. In the end I’m sure we are just trying to satisfy what we think of as catchy or not. JH - So practices just end up in this freeform mess? AR - Yea… usually. Out of the mess, somebody will start to dominate. Like some clever idea will develop, that the rest of us just “get”. We all kind of latch on to that. And that tends to inspire everybody else coming up with a part that they like. That is stage one. So we record all those jams like that… and then we try and remember which ones had good riffs. And then I will actually tape a compilation of the best parts. If there are things that inspire me… because then I have to drag it back and put words to it. That doesn’t always come so easy. So I have to use stuff that kind of lights a fire under me to come back and say “ok, I’ve got this [lyric]!” Then we kind of bash out an arrangement from there… and then it’s done. JH - Do you try and come up with a lyrical theme before it’s finished? AR - …No. I absolutely shoehorn stuff to fit (laughter). I just start out chanting gibberish until something clicks, and then it comes out of that. And then it tends to come in burst. Once I have a line that I like it kind of writes the story around itself. JH - I was going to ask… listening to it… I don’t want to use the word nonsense (laughter). But lyric wise, it doesn’t seem like your setting out to tell a story. But more, fitting words to the music. AR - Well, we are pretty heavy editors. So often I will have written a more fleshed out idea… at least something that makes sense to me. And then, just in the course of arranging the song, we’ll either delete so many lines or a verse, or decide we want to get to this other part faster, that there is kind of no room for it all. So I just pick my favorite lines… so in the end, it’s like, “well, I knew what I meant (laughter)… someone else might not”. JH - On this album, and I’m not going to claim all powerful indie knowledge and say that I’ve heard the first one, because I haven’t (laughter). But on this album, it just seems way more free flowing than most… and after you saying that, I can understand some things better. Some songs do speak out in a liner way, and you can understand “the point” or “the story”, but some of them don’t. That makes a heck of a lot more sense. AR - Right. I’m not intentionally being oblique (laughter). In the end we just go with what works, or whatever sounds good. For whatever sensibilities that is appealing to, I don’t know. I pick the lines that I think are my favorite. Or, because I’m kind of vain (laughter), if I’m singing something in practice and everybody else says, “hey, that was cool,” then I’ll drop everything and go with that. “Yea, more of that… that’s what I had in mind.” (more laughter) JH - Mistakes end up being the best stuff anyway… especially with writing songs and lyrics. AR - Absolutely. It’s the little things… the stuff that jars you. I have no idea if it’s read on the listening end. I don’t know if anyone can sense when that happens. But at least for us, by taking a chance and saying we are going to some of this stuff out of improvisation, it usually is the unexpected things that end up becoming the hook. Like the change that somebody through in that ended up making a little more powerful of a groove. JH - So are you and Dave (Einmo, the other guitarist) complete gear heads? AR - We’re not all that precious about it, you know? But yea, we have a ton of effects pedals. But I’m kind of sick of the collector mind frame. You know, “don’t touch it, it’s vintage!”. JH - Or “analog snobs”? AR - Yea, exactly. And we totally Pro Tooled our album. I mean, we recorded it analog first, but just for the ease of it really, put it into Pro Tools. So we could cut and paste, splice and dice. We have no problem using it, you know… it’s a new tool. It’s better than some of the old ways, so exploit it. Limitations are great, but the analog one is just snobbery, it’s not a wise limitation. It’s one thing to say, “We are going to do it this way, because the restrictions will help inspire us,” but if you are going to do it because ‘tubes are cool’… well. There’s no doubt about it they do sound better, but we’re not Stevie Ray Vaughan you know. It’s not what we are going for, it’s not what we are capable of. JH - There is some stuff that you can’t do with analog stuff either… AR - Yea. We listen to a lot of that… well, it used to be called techno, now it’s IDM… because that’s where the most interesting things happen, production wise. I love the cinematic quality of a great ambient record. And I don’t care if it’s utterly artificial, or if it was shaped together out of found sounds and actual recordings. But who cares? They’re composing using the tools at hand… whatever works. JH - And it still takes talent to make a good album that way. AR - Oh yea. In the end it comes down to talent, or more importantly, good taste. JH - Yea it’s strange how this whole topic, with musicians and music listeners, is split into two camps. And it’s too bad. Because there is a lot of great stuff out there that someone might not listen to because of how they feel on this topic. AR - Yea, all of a sudden they are going to write off the end result just because… well, it doesn’t seem fair. JH - So how is the album being received around the country? AR - We’ve been getting decent reviews in obscure and semi-obscure places. Just starting to get some nice glossy mag reviews. It’s pretty cool. I’m often surprised how people will talk about it like it’s some totally weird, radical new thing in the review. Because I don’t think it is. Sometimes I get worried about us presenting this front like we are some experimental band, because we’re not. We’re a rock band. And yet, some people hear it as being really out there and really electronic based, and some don’t even notice anything different about it. So it’s funny to get the mix of feedback. It’s all different colors… So people do call bullshit, “well, they said this was out there and it’s not really… it’s not bad… but you know.” JH - Yea, when I first heard it I though it was just a rock album with guitar noises. Then I dropped the whole D-Plan thing in there. AR - That’s the band we get compared to the most. And I can tell you in all honesty that I’ve only heard one song by them. And it was at Clay’s house with him saying, “I want you to hear some Dismemberment Plan.” I thought I didn’t even want to hear them, either it was going to be a grave disappointment to me or I’ll feel like, “ahh we’re not as good as them.” (laughter) So all I heard was one song… it was kind of anthem rock, I thought it sounded like the Foo Fighters. So I didn’t see the resemblance… but maybe it wasn’t a representative song. JH - Probably not. Because a lot of their stuff is groove oriented. AR - Nah, this more guitar chugin’… I mean, it was smart, but it didn’t blow my mind. I didn’t see a whole lot of similarities. JH - Well, it’s probably good that you’re not some big Dismemberment Plan fan. AR - Yea, I’m so behind the times, you know? (laughter) I just have no idea what’s going on in the indie scene. I was really into Guided By Voices a few years ago, and I just kind of lost touch since then. JH - That’s not necessarily a bad thing to tell you the truth. It’s not always the place to be… it’s not always the place spawning the most interesting, or even most entertaining music. AR - Yea, but I’m glad the college underground, for lack of a better word, exists. Because it’s where things can happen… and it’s unlikely to come from anywhere else. JH - Have you done any touring? AR - No. We’ve gone down the West Coast a few times, but we’ve never got back east. It’s something we need to do [though]. I’m in school right now, so it’s hard for me to do that without taking a quarter off. I can be free for two weeks, but for specific two weeks. And the problem with trying to book a tour is you have to see where the openings are a build a tour around that. They’ve never heard of us in Cleveland, so if we call they’re not going to give us the night of our choice. We’ve been trying to find an agent… I think we have someone who is going to help us out with our next one at least. On a “see-how-it-goes” basis. JH - …work your way a little more east? AR - Yea. Well, I think it’s easier to tour in the east. The cities are so much closer together, and there is so many more people. Plus there are a lot of cool scenes worth visiting. The problem is I want to wait until summer, but everyone else wants to go earlier. If we wait until summer than I can finish my school, but then the college towns are dried up… so. From here, we talked for a while about childhood musical loves. Everything from our mutual love of metal at an early age, to the subsequent rejection of our roots for “cool” music. Then it all got brought back full circle when the conversation turns to Pearl Jam. JH - [The solo] is a lost art form from the metal. AR - Yea, it seems like [musical] proficiency is way down. JH - Well, proficiency is way down, but a lot of grunge kids got the wrong impression of what it (a solo) should be when they first heard Pearl Jam. AR - Yea… oh God. “Hot licks!” JH - Like all they needed was a wah pedal and then just hit the same four notes over and over. AR - They are a band that I just never got into… despite the proximity. (laughter) They always seemed like a huge step backwards. JH - You were supposed to be into them… AR - Were you? I don’t know. I hope… (mockingly) I hope no one from here reads this (laugher), but they we disliked in town. They were always considered the mainstream wanna-bes. There were real bands here, and there were opportunist, and they were regarded as such. In the end… and I don’t want to overly criticize them, they’re just not my thing… they proved themselves better than anyone estimated (laughter). There had to be an enemy, disserving or not, it was them. Again our conversation fell into comparing our music love and laughing at the idea of rock stars. Once the idea of rock stars, and the idea of them being more interesting than your average music listener, came up… the interview turned decidedly to mockery of the whole journalistic system. JH - …you realize how much of it is just posturing. The whole, “I’m buying into this whole rock star thing”… AR - It’s kind of fun though… (laughter) But people do want to read about something more glamorous than their own station, for sure. So you have liberty to spice this up as much as you like. (laughter) completely fabricate things if you want. JH - “I could hear the stripers in the background.” AR - Right, yes. “I heard something, that was without a doubt, the sound of breasts.” (Laughter) -- Jake Haselman
"Through Being Cool" By Matt Schild "I think a lot of people's goals are like, meet the status quo," says Sushirobo singer/guitarist Arthur Roberts. ";They're just so pleased when they find their own voice and say 'Oh, I can do this as good as anyone else!' So then another mediocre pop band is born. It's like everybody is shooting for par on the course. They just want to sound as good as their friend's band that they like. Some people don't really push themselves. You want everyone to try and hopefully the interesting ones will float to the top. There's just so many bands out there that are happy to be cool." With such a declaration, you probably suspect that Roberts is at least a couple steps ahead of the average pop act out there. Pop his band's sophomore effort, The Light- Fingered Feeling Of Sushirobo (2003, Pattern 25), into your stereo and all your suspicions are confirmed. Joined by guitarist Dave Einmo, bassist Clay Martin and drummer Barry Shaw, Roberts cranks out pop music that's got about as much to do with the Weezer-wannabe status quo as Sandra Bernhard has with beauty: Guitars jump through a maze of effects and amplification as the band flip-flops through song structures that touch on everything from '70s art-punk to pre-murder suspect Phil Spector to the quirky and witty pop of bands such as Enon or The Dismemberment Plan. Those token Cheap Trick references and Green Day riffs? Save them for your band, you poor unimaginative sucker. They've got no place in Sushirobo's work, that's for sure. In an era where bands unapologetically wear their influences on their sleeves like badges of honor rather than scarlet letters that signify lack of innovation, Seattle's Sushirobo breaks from the herd to joust with a sound that's so idiosyncratic that it's difficult to describe it using the usual rock-critic jargon, so you're going to have to use your imagination: Think of a rollicking roller-coaster ride that climbs and dives on its way between everything from Lifter Puller and Enon to Devo and Gang of Four while rolling through a post-psychedelic rainstorm of weird analog effects held together by bass groves that are half funk half indie rock. If being cool is simply meeting the minimum requirements of musical idolatry, Sushirobo is anything but cool. "For me, if something is weird rather than predictable, if something comes from left field and surprises me, I tend to love it and feel that same sort of rush and energy as someone who just wrote a brilliant book," Roberts says. ";For me, it's the same kind of love. I love it when I see a band I've never heard before and they do something I don't understand. As a player, I was trying to be that more rather than relying on my strengths. I think that's all how we approached it at first." Sushirobo's lovably oddball sound is a product of its unusual origins as much as anything else. Former bassist Roberts, who was between musical projects, lived in a house full of musicians. With an arsenal of weapons at hand, as well as the motivations provided by Seattle's dreary Sunday afternoons (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to root for the Seahawks every Sunday?), Roberts' basement slowly became ground zero for informal goof-off jams among his friends. Week by week jams coalesced into songs and an afternoon pastime turned into a habit. After a year or so of fiddling in the basement, Roberts and company, to their amazement, had a band ready. "Without any real reason to get together we developed a good balance and direction with totally no intention of starting a project," Roberts laughs. ";A couple years later we decided to do it. I think we had already felt out our roles." During the band's period of subterranean incubation, writing songs and preparing a set weren't on anyone's minds. The goal, outside of simple immediate amusement, was just to give Sushirobo's members an opportunity to break out of the habits of conventional rock music they'd picked up over the years. Know how to play killer power chords? Start goofing off with drones aided by spookily applied pedals. Drop the usual rock beat for circular beats inspired by drum machines. Explore space. In short, forget everything you've ever learned about the do's and don't's of rock'n'roll and pop songwriting. The band didn't just learn to play with its idiosyncratic style while it was still in its embryonic stage: Roberts and his clan took things further. Cleansed along with the old habits were also all the drive to become the quintessential pop outfit, to release the perfect pop single and to beat Brian Wilson at his own game. Without impossible expectations to chase, Sushirobo was ready to let its sound go where it needed. "We never meant to get a band going in this case. My other band before, we worked so hard at trying to get things right. You always fall short of your expectations when you set them too high," Roberts says. ";I think it was more disappointing or depressing to work it that way. The frustration level was a lot higher. This was exploration. It was fun. It was everybody pushing themselves to play in a way they didn't usually play. It seemed like the sky's the limit." Of course, the process of pop-cultural cleansing took Sushirobo more than a year to work through, and, honestly, the band still embraces pop culture in its own quirky way. There's enough grounding in the band's sound to make The Light-Fingered Feeling Of Sushirobo accessible to everyone from overly studied rock historians down to the most wet-behind-the-ears initiate into the underground. That's part of its success: While it breaks from the past, Sushirobo didn't spin off into a parallel timeline in which the rules of songwriting don't apply. Then again, it's hard to totally break from rock'n'roll history. The genre is the soundtrack to the modern age. It eats everything, from R&B to funk to soul and hip-hop it meets. It's remarkably adaptable, and therefore, pretty freakin' hard to escape from. There's a very, very fine line drawn between paying homage to rock history and becoming a watered-down clone, however. Finding the balance between historical debts and newfangled sounds is something few bands do as well as Sushirobo. "There's so much available to you that everybody is kind of responsible to history in a way. It's not like it's the '60s and this music had only been around for 10 years," Roberts says. ";Now you've got 40 years of well documented rock history. Everybody should be into good '60s garage rock. It's great! I like it when elements of those styles kind of creep back into something new, because there's too much to ignore that now. At the same time, stuff that's purely retro kind of bugs the shit out of me." ";I think it's kind of a trekkie phenomenon, too, the whole, kind of like Big Star school of things. People are so locked into that and so reverent to their heroes, they're afraid to push the envelope at all. You don't have to pay your respects all the time. Come on, mix things up! Modern music can be really cool! Don't think that anything new is lesser than anything that came before it just because it's new." That kill your idols mentality is sure to piss off the aural obsessives who spend hours pouring over obscure liner notes and posting on indie-rock message boards. The Light-Fingered Feeling Of Sushirobo, however, renders all those bitch sessions totally futile. Sushirobo is doing what it does best, and that's make great pop records, and, in the end, isn't that why you put anything in your ear?
indieworkshop So, indie rock is losing one of its great ass shaking bands this year. Yeah, I’m talking about Dismemberment Plan. But have no fear; there is a replacement for all your bootie moving cravings. SushiRobo, coming from Seattle, is ready to fill the void left in your hearts. Ok, so they don’t really sound all that much like the D-Plan, but they do lay down some seriously danceable grooves. The sounds and melodies sound like they might be coming straight out of a machine. You almost convince yourself that you are listening to some manipulated samples and drum machines, but come to find out, SushiRobo pride themselves on only using the instrumentation of your standard rock outfit. That’s right, everything you hear is made with tricked out guitars and a live and organic rhythm section. The lyrics are delivered deadpan, but infused with infectious grooves, much like Cake (hey, shut up all you haters). But while Cake seemed to like to take a basic yet quirky approach to music, SushiRobo will have you feeling unearthly. They wrap their catchy riffs around spacey noises and HUGE bass lines, making for a very new and refreshing sound. This album is for summer, or what’s left of it. It’s fun and ripe for the dance floor. The Light-Fingered Feeling… has quickly become one of those records that always seems to find its way into my head. It’s a lot more creative and innovative than most when it’s stacked alongside other full-lengths I’ve heard this year. The only thing I worry about is how the album will hold up in five years. It might come across as dated…but who knows? As for now it’ll more than do.
If you're a musician, you probably hang your hat on the here and now. Pick an easily defined genre -- it doesn't really matter if it's garage-rock, power-pop or New York's rock revival -- and cash in on recent trends. Don't sweat the artistic dead-ends and consumer hangover that's sure to follow a drunken, fad-driven rise. Play for now. Your retirement will be there for you. While grasshoppers like the Fed, bankers and a zillion trendy rock outfits party like winter's never coming, Sushirobo's The Light-Fingered Feeling Of is the hard-working ant. Sure, its savings may seem silly -- especially when it doesn't have the flashiest new car -- and its distance from the white-hot rock'n'roll styles won't make it an immediate hit with the kids, but Sushirobo's hopes aren't pinned on an immediate cash-in. With an idiosyncratic take on indie pop, the band touches on the lovable weirdness of The Dismemberment Plan, Enon or Lifter Puller, this record's got the goods to be around for the long haul. Think funkified bass lines churn underneath skitterish guitar work that takes the groove of the Plan without its spaz-fueled eccentricity to get songs that are as eccentric and catchy as anything this side of D.C. (";New Laboratory Assistant" and ";Last Call"). Other times, singer Arthur Robert's deadpan deliver -- think Lifter Puller or Cake -- gives the act's tales of everyday horrors a Kafka-esque sense of foreboding, be it with a tale of amateur theater gone strangely awry ("Community Theater") or with a snapshot of a sebaceous, overwhelming middle-management jerk (";Zuckerman's Favorite Joke"). Sushirobo doesn't challenge listeners with a battery of cross-pollinated styles or heady envelope pushing, so The Light-Fingered Feeling of doesn't pack the sort of mental wallop as that of Enon or the Plan. Nor does the band rely on easily accessible alt-rock, power pop or indie-rock conventions, however. Sushirobo's got a sound that splits the difference between cerebral indie pop and goofy dance pop. It doesn't hitch a ride on any of the bandwagons of the week, but, then again, the band will still be in great shape once those bandwagons crash and burn. - Matt Schild
Sushirobo are the best band you haven't heard of yet. With any luck, and a little more tireless touring, that will all change soon. Having released 2002's critically acclaimed Drawings and Garbage Structures (CMJ and Alternative Press went justifiably nuts over its gaunt, angular pop songs and witty lyricism) on Pattern 25 Records and hard at work on The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo (tentatively set for release in September), the group has gained quite a bit of exposure, with their songs being used for MTV's Road Rules and The Real World. What does this all amount to? A kick-ass band with a cultish following, primed for celebrity once America gains its collective senses and starts paying attention. I recently got the chance to talk to Sushirobo's articulate singer and guitarist Arthur Roberts right before he embarked on the group's 10-date West Coast tour. I found out how Sushirobo feels about the constant comparisons to art-punk their music draws, and what the deal is with that name. Who would you say are your musical kindred spirits? Right now I'd have to say the Liars, in New York, definitely. I really think that they approach making their music similarly to us, and they're one of the best bands out there. Cobra Verde, too, is an ex-Guided by Voices group that I think we have a lot in common with. And Can, the German group, has always been a big influence in the way that they created their music. Describe how Sushirobo creates a song. Well, we record all of our practices. Afterwards, we go through all of it and select the parts that we feel work, and then either structure a song off of that by adding on to it, or combine it with other parts that we liked. That's the same process that Can used, which is why I say they influence us so much. What is a Sushirobo fan like, and how do they react at your shows? [Laughing] Shy. They're the people that are into the same kind of music as us, so they tend to stay pretty calm. When we play the bigger institutions in Seattle like Graceland, the atmosphere is very different than the clubs and bars where people like to loosen up a bit and get more rowdy. The nice thing is that the sound at those places is great, but it's very subdued. You guys get compared to bands like Wire and other late '70s art-punk bands. How do you feel about that as a group? It's nice, because we all love those bands and definitely have them in mind when we're writing songs. But we'd like to think that people hear that influence as well as our own sound when they listen to us. It's the same way that you never read a Liars review that doesn't mention Gang of Four; we get those parallels drawn a lot. Does it affect the group's dynamic having a member who runs Pattern 25 Records? There's definitely a conflict of interest there. When we're being promoted we have to be careful not to make it seem like we're part of some big empire. I think people might get the wrong idea from that -- the label is actually coming out of pocket with a tremendous amount of work involved. It's not as if expenses aren't an issue. How was your last visit to Chico? Oh, it was great. We played on a Tuesday night at Moxie's Café, where I guess they stopped having shows a little bit ago. I remember we went to Duffy's Tavern and checked out a cool record shop right next door. What do you want people to think leaving your show? ";Wow, I've never seen anything quite like that." Where did the name Sushirobo come from? My friend Rob came up with it. He's always coming up with terrific names for bands that he doesn't use; it's based on a Japanese product called the Sushi Robot. What you do is put the rice, fish and seaweed in it, and there's a little rice cooker inside. It spits these perfect pieces of sushi on the other side. The ads for it are funny, because the language is so stiff and excitable. What kind of sushi is your favorite? I love sushi. I really like all the different kinds of rolls, but I'd have to say the spicy tuna rolls are the best. What kind of sushi do you think Sushirobo most resembles? Definitely the roe. You know the eggs that are super-salty and pop in between your teeth? That's us.
Well, with 2003 being the best year for music in ages, it's no surprise that another one of these dub/post-punk-inspired indie bands has completely captured my fancy. In 2001 it was Q and Not U, in 2002 it was Interpol and the Hidden Chord, and now 2003's representative is none other than Sushirobo, a winsome yet progressive pop band that will no doubt have fans of the Dismemberment Plan and Gang of Four tearing up the dance floor. This band really has it all; every single song is built around a bass line that sounds like something Rick James mistakenly cast off in a cocaine-induced haze, freeing the guitars to wax experimental with nary a connection to the world of traditionally structured pop music. And then there are the lyrics, which may be my very favorite part of Sushirobo. Most of the songs are sort of bizarre vignettes built around campy song titles like ";Shiva the Destroyer," ";New Laboratory Assistant" and ";Zuckerman's Favorite Joke." But whereas most punk rock or metalcore bands would be content to chalk up another point for exciting song titles and write some more abstract filler lyrics about how existentially painful it is to be an upper-middle-class white suburban male (FUCK the University of Michigan man, FUCK IT!), Sushirobo flesh these tantalizing strings of words out into brief but well-developed portraits and stories. Not since all of those early 80s new wave bands of yore has a group been so successful at writing such vivid lyrics; I can perfectly visualize the new laboratory assistant written about in the song of that name, and if this were 1982 all we would need is a C student in NYU's film school and a budget of 500 bucks to make Sushirobo international superstars. But alas this is 2003, and it would be great to be hearing Sushirobo in Wal-Mart instead of 50 Cent, but there's something to be said for the very real pleasure the underground gets from keeping groups like this to itself. Like the Dismemberment Plan (who are easily Sushirobo's closest musical cousin, right down to the syrupy-sweet vocals), Sushirobo were made to set the dance floors of VFW halls and musty bars on fire, not to be the soundtrack to Alpha Kappa Asshole's next bong hit. More than progressive, more than challenging, more than palatable, Sushirobo are an unwaveringly fun rock and roll band, and if you haven't surrendered your right to party to all of the self-important neo-Morrisseys out there this is a record that needs to be in your collection.
I think Donny and Marie Osmond said it best when he said: "They're a little bit funky... and a little bit rock and roll." Here's a band that named themselves after a Vancouver restaurant where robots make sushi, playing music that intentionally de-emphasizes traditional guitar, instead opting for spacious tones with plenty of room for the irreverent. With saucy, well-articulated lyrics, Arthur Roberts made me giggle by rhyming a sentence ending in the word "Belladonna" with, "You light a candle and pretend it's marijuana." Tee hee. And I don't even think that lyric was from a real song — I believe it was his consummate-front-man-filler-schmutz while guitar player Dave Einmo troubleshot his instrument's technical issues. Now while it might cause a "normal" rock band anxiety to have guitar functionality meltdown during a CD-release show, that effect must have been exponentially greater for Sushirobo, as they had wacko guitar effects a-go-go. Not that their anxiety showed. Their effortless charm was infectious, and after one improv song, Sushirobo were back up playing, deconstructing the very notion of guitar — as in, eliciting wildly-wacky sounds from it that didn't even sound like guitar-like — part swirling weirdness, part scary little Asian-sounding guitar blips and pings and wizzbangs, all the while carrying their songs along with a strong methodical rhythm section and quirky vocals. While at times I found the overall sound was a bit thin — hey, I like driving indie guitar rock! — I totally dug that Sushirobo elevated indie-rock sound effects to a new level of ingenuity. I've decided to dub them Seattle's capricious-pop masters. I'll have your sushi!! I love it!
At the Arts desk of the California Aggie, there lies a pile of CDs waiting patiently to be reviewed. Every once in awhile there is a recognizable band name, but usually they're so obscure they may as well be 14 year old boys playing in mom's basement. I flip through the stack, and eventually pick out an album that looks, based solely on cover art and title, like it may have some sort of potential. I go home, pop on the CD, and am rarely surprised to find out that yes, there is a very good reason why that particular band is lost in obscurity. But occasionally, I pop in the CD and am shocked, amazed, astounded to have stumbled across an album in the Aggie stockpile that actually deserves, nay, demands to be listened to, over and over again. Sushirobo's latest offering, their first full-length album, Drawings and Garbage Structures, is such an album. All twelve tracks on the album are keepers, there is not a moment of filler to be found. The band, hailing from Seattle, Washington, is composed of Barry Shaw, pounding out highly danceable rock rhythms on drums, Clay Martini adding the low end on bass, and Dave Einmo and Arthur Roberts shifting at a moments notice from hauntingly eerie atmospheric soundscapes to straight dance-rock grooves. Added to this mix, you have Roberts' extraordinary lyrical talents, heavily laced with imagery and delivered with the conviction of an alien abductee. The album bounces between the jittery rhythms of "Fruit Flies," to the moody, spaced out "Royal Taster of Food," to "Atmospherics," a soundtrack for a space ride that blends tip tap drums with lyrics chanting, "the air up there is very rare, the air within is twice as thin." If you missed out on Sushirobo's recent Davis show, the band is due to roll through the Sacramento area again in September to promote their next album, The Light Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo. Be on the lookout, it's quite a treat to watch the boys dance across their fields of effects peddles. -- Dan GlendeningXXX
Sushirobo have gotten a fair amount of MTV airplay in the last two years, with tracks from their first full-length, Drawings and Garbage Structures, showing up as background to the hyper-reality of the Real World and Road Rules in 2002. On this latest release, the Seattle band teases extraterrestrial sounds from guitars, bass and drums. The results are remarkable, a postcard from outer space, a disco dance, a rock band. Wire filtered through early Beck might be one way to think of it. Only rarely does Sushirobo venture back toward the conventional earthly sounds of rock and roll, and even those ventures have been preceded by plenty of outer-space journeying. Take, for example, "Moonfruit," the album's opener. A feedback line starts things off, but we are soon lulled into a false sense of security by the steady bass and clean drums. Then things get weird as the first note is endlessly distorted over the rest of the melody, sounding like an amplified sawblade, rather than a guitar. A second guitar enters, with a simple melodic line that evolves into yet another layer in the landscape of layers. Then the vocals start. And it goes on. The remaining tracks are varied in structure, keeping you listening carefully, for what starts out as a straight-ahead rock song will suddenly diverge and curve off into that freaky space music, or vice-versa. Lyrically, the band has a sense of humor and a keen taste for the absurd. One of my favorite tracks is "New Laboratory Assistant," partly because it starts off with hand-clapping drums, but also because a frequent verse-ending refrain is, "She is a trope/ my perfect isotope/ and I am just the smallest bar of soap." Or perhaps I should choose "Shiva the Destroyer," where "your power chords/ pens and swords/ cut like wire words." I could easily do without the title track and album closer, or rather, I think it would be better off minus the vocals, which don't contribute anything that instruments couldn't. All in all, a fun, quirky album, well worth repeated listens.
Singer/guitarist Arthur Roberts, drummer Barry Shaw, guitarist Dave Einmo and bass player Clay Martini have adroitly meshed the standard pop/rock verse-chorus-verse format with robotic, effects-driven space-pop. The result is electronically twisted, quirky-jerky material that is also as catchy as anything Roberts' previous band produced. The disc is filled with otherworldly tones and synth-tinged sounds. But it's done with human hands, not DATs and chips. The inside cover states "no synthesizers." But you wouldn't know it from hearing cuts like opener "Garbage Structure," which starts out like a Dr. Who soundtrack bite before kicking into light automaton-funk that sets the party not for 1999 but for 2099. The past, though, is as important as the future to Sushirobo. Politically sarcastic "The Candidate" recalls Wire with its coldly digital arrangement. Meanwhile, the dryly surreal "Rat or Mole?" brings to mind King Missile's musical prose pieces. Twitchy "Fruit Flies" and suicide story "Two Girls" evoke, well, the Posies due to addictive melodies that will live in your head for days. Sushirobo unites the future and past flawlessly during the chilly re-deconstruction of obsession narrative "I'm In Love with a German Film Star," originally a minor hit for obscure UK post-punks the Passions. At first, Drawings and Garbage Structures may seem more machine than man, but the album stands up to repeated spins because it never appears sterile and Sushirobo rarely strays far from the melody or a hook-enhanced chorus. Recommended for those who understood Gary Numan or anyone who wanted the see the Pixies get their groove on. Grade: B+ --Doug Simpson
The Seattle quintet credit themselves as a group that stays as far as possible from anything that even remotely resembles a traditional guitar riff. (I still feel that maybe they shouldn't try so hard all the time.) Like a rebellious child going against their roots, Sushirobo is going to extremes to produce an unconventional rock record that's coming out of the North West U.S.A., home of garage band grunge/post-punk/alternative sound of the early nineties. The result is a sound electronica album and a conversation piece and a marketable product. If that's what you're into. But wait, what's that you say, it's not electronica at all but an organic blend of guitar, bass and drums. With evident technical precision and poetic lyrics, this album would fare well among the college crowd who define themselves by experimentation. Or really anyone who feels like they're drowning in top-40 commercialized pop, Sushirobo can be your salvation as their sound is intended to blast you light years away from the water logged traditional sound. For those who want a rock album to sound like, well, a rock album, and you firmly believe that "1978 electronic, space aged rock" has its place in 1978, well that's where I was coming from initially too. Give the CD another spin, you just might be pleasantly surprised.
With the colorful décor of pitch-bent notes and synthesizer-like tones, it's difficult to fathom that all sounds on this album were generated from guitars, bass and drums. Sushirobo's use of crazy guitar effects, such as modulation delays and deep-sweeping flangers gives their music a glistening, not-too-distant future feel, while still maintaining their dual guitar ferocity. Arthur Robert's vocal delivery and unorthodox lyrical juxtapositions are reminiscent of Travis Morrison of The Dismemberment Plan. For instance, "Rat or Mole?" marries the thought of switching places with a random person, references Heart of Darkness, and comes back to a refrain about a grocery clerk with freakish hands: "Like spiders on electric plates / nobody could look away." Clay Martini's sturdy bass parts glue the songs together, linking spastic guitars and Robert's vocal melodies with Barry Shaw's superb drumming. The rhythm section functions like a fluid drawing on graph paper; the etchings are not confined to the stark and even lines. If you like music that is equal parts brain and brawn, you shouldn't miss their show at Moxie's on Friday, June 14th - if their live performance is anything like their album, Sushirobo will knock your socks off.
But now I just listen to the damned thing over and over, even when I don't have to. There's something to this group after all. They're tighter than grandpa's undies, due to the fact that the other three members of the group are all in the interesting trip-pop combo Spyglass; they bury some interesting frickin' noises in the mix; Roberts sounds pretty convincing as a boy chanteuse. There's a whole lot of Gary Numan floating around in here, and I'm a sucker for Gary Numan. But ultimately, I can't really quantify what it is about this album. Sure, "Rat or Mole?" is just a disguised rip-off of The Nails' "88 Lines About 44 Women" -- but the chorus rocks! And yeah, "Young Lions (With Whistle Report)" is The Tubes crossed with a bad Police cover band (probably called "Invisible Sun") fronted by Max Fischer -- but it rocks! And no one really needed a "musical de-re-construction" of "I'm in Love With a German Film Star," by The Passions, an ultra-obscure Britwave band -- but that kinda rocks too. Shit. Okay, fine, this is a fun record that doesn't get all hung up on "integrity" or "meaningfulness" or any of those outdated canards. Are you happy now?
Highlight Track: I don't know what the hell "Rat or Mole?" is about, but it’s damned cool. The vocals bring to mind the quirky delivery of M. Doughty, while the chorus will stick to your brain like peanut butter. Honorable Mention: "Fruit Flies" is even more catchy and much more peppy. Listen to all the layers; there’s more at work here than in your average addictive pop song.
Tunefilter.com,June 2001
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"Sushirobo plays space-age electronic rock, a la Wire or Gang of Four, with an arty poise suggesting emotions generated by artificial life forms."
n The Real World. No matter. If the quartet continues the climb from obscure urban curiosity to national name, it'll be the rarest of phenomena; what Seattle band has infiltrated U.S. air in the last 10 years without at least one juiced-up, monster power chord? Sushirobo couldn't care less; their aesthetic hails from the impressionistic asteroid belt of Wire and Devo. They drown even the most familiar pop progressions in sleepy, exaggerated, phased-out effects. Hell, in "Shiva the Destroyer," vocalist Arthur Robbers warns right away that "your power chords" are "powerless to protect you." Fine and good. Bassist Clay Martin is not only responsible for anchoring the head trips, but propelling them; he's the only player that operates under pop auspices. Robbers and co-guitarist Dave Einmo weave through jammy digressions, caressing each other with washes of reverb while drummer Barry Shaw tries to rein it all in. Even when Shaw pushes the tempo ("Talk Show"), the band's gravity pull thwarts the jet thrust. Sushirobo's platter is really not unlike the Dismemberment Plan's quirky, vaguely romantic puzzle boxes. The only question is, are you gonna open them . . . or Puck? ANDREW BONAZELLI Sushirobo play Old Firehouse, 16510 N.E. 79th St., Redmond, 425-556-2370, at 7 p.m. Fri., Aug. 15, with the Loveless and Goodnight Trail, Cobra High, and Bird Shaped Holes in the Sky. $7.
