Attention Please [VINYL]

Boris, who are well known as masters of the heavier-than-you-think-possible guitar-noise genre, are forced out of their comfort zone, quite probably by vocalist Wata's desire to branch out. As in breathy ballads and atmospherically shifting soundstages and 12-string guitars. This is a moody mostly-electric masterpiece. For the very small proportion of the population who qualify as "audiophiles" and care about acoustic quality in recordings, it's a double masterpiece; the quality of the sound on this one is diamonds all over. The fact that it's all in Japanese which I don't understand limits the scope of my emotional reactions; too bad.

Boris has released four discs this year: they put out Klatter (February 23rd), New Album (March 16th), and on May 24th they put out both Heavy Rocks (2011) and Attention Please. I guess they are making up for a relatively quiet three years - since the Smile madness of 2008, they've mainly only released and co-released singles, as well as an EP with Ian Ashbury of the Cult. But if you take away all of the covers on these four albums (one) and re-recordings of older songs (four), or the doubling of songs across two releases (seven songs appear twice across three of these discs), it's more like 23 songs instead of the 35 that are listed on these four releases. Yes, very confusing. But that's Boris.

This is the heavily-anticipated all-Wata-vocals Boris CD, where she sings every song except for the acoustic instrumental "Aileron". Maybe having Wata sing on all the songs isn't such a novelty, though, since by the time of this release she has actually already sung on 12 songs since she debuted with "Rainbow" in 2006 (and they've released four versions of that song over the years, including two live songs). There were four on "New Album", one on "Altar", four on the "Japanese Heavy Rock Hits" EP series (including the cover of Earth & Fire's "Seasons"), and she also sang the cover of the Cult's "Rain" on BXI.

Five of the songs on this release have appeared previously, most of them on "New Music" (Hope", "Party Boy", "Les Paul Custom `86' and "Spoon"), but one appeared on the "Golden Dance Classics" split with disco funk outfit 9dw ("Tokyo Wonder Land") in 2009. Opening song "Attention Please" starts off with bass and drum, then some squeaky guitar from Michio Kurihara, before Wata's vocals come in moaning and groaning. It sounds like something Julee Cruise might have been a part of for a David Lynch project. "Hope" is a sweet, light hit that is a bit sparsely-produced compared to its companion on "New Album". "Party Boy" starts off with groovy bass hits, it's a sweet pop song, but again it's a stripped-down version of the one on "New Album", which has a hyperdrive chorus. "See You Next Week" is sweet and airy and seems to be only Wata's voice, a teeny weeny bit of guitar, and some peculiar background percussion. "Tokyo Wonder Land" is a sparse little song that has a basic best, some pretty Wata vocals, and then an absolutely screeching solo. The "Golden Dance Classics" version is less slick, a bit noisier, and has Takeshi singing, the solo is duller, and there are hardly any lyrics at all except "na na na, na na na, naaaaaaaa". I think Wata does a better job. "You" is a sleepy song, kind of like "The Sinking Belle" from Altar, Shinobu Narita (whoever he is) appears on this track. Slow and sleepy. "Aileron" is a short instrumental bit played on acoustic guitar, it has a bit of a Spanish flamenco sound to it - it is played by Eiji Hashizume - it's possible that no Boris members appear on this track. "Les Paul Custom `86' is an experimental song that has occasional heavy bass chords (nice), and Wata's singing, which is sometime sung, sometimes spoken, sometimes whispered, and brief phrases of Takeshi's vocals as well. There are sound effects too, like car revving, and coughing. Goofy. The "New Album" version has stronger Takeshi vocals, more electronics, and no heavy bass chords, but there's vocal manipulation and coughing and some fake strings - sparse. "Spoon" is a fun pop rocker, although without the keyboard treatment on its "New Album" version it's a bit less than what it should be. Album closer "Hand in Hand" is guitar, sound effects and voice, it's spooky and a bit scary!

The packaging is okay. There are lots of pictures of Wata - which is what male fans of Boris have probably been dreaming about forever - but she's dressed up in some sort of weird 1920s flapper outfit with a pageboy haircut holding a wand and posing with some sort of black a shawl. Lyrics. Yawn.

Attention Please was a manga in the 1970s, it was about airline stewardesses. More recently it's been made into a TV series. Here's an image of the poster for that series.

This is not shoegazer, sludge, doom, metal, pop, folktronica, or whatever. It's Boris. People keep forgetting that Boris is basically the Japanese Melvins, meaning they don't care what you think or what you want. In fact, telling them what you want to hear is tantamount to giving them an idea for a concept album that is exactly NOT what you asked for. So complaining that this isn't Heavy Rocks version 7.3 is only going to encourage them to annoy you further.

With that said, I like that Boris can't sit still in their little pigeonhole that fans and detractors have built for them. I like that Feedbacker, Flood, Pink, et al are exactly the same in that they are nothing alike. And I like the idea of a band that can pretty much crush any genre and repeatedly defy the meaning of the word "genre" every time they do it.

Oh, but you want to hear about this album, right? Okay... In the great pantheon of Boris albums, Attention Please gains the notorious distinction of being the only Boris album I can play for friends and relatives without being glared at and mocked for my horrible taste in music. This is unfortunate. Consequently I have to listen to it when I'm alone, to enjoy its splendor outside of the company of others. Sorry friends, but when I'm around the only Boris you get is the stuff you don't like. And that's the gist of how good this is.