Feeds You

Hyperkinetic, lo-fi rock that leaps from one musical motif to another, like a child with ADHD channel surfing between 1970s type New York no wave noise, Pop Group style dance-influenced post-punk, Japanese indie rock in the Number Girl mould, and various snatches of jazz, dub, and even some heavily beaten and badly bruised variant of pop. Guitarist Iida Jinichiro lays the riffs on thickly, with the metal-influenced three-note riff of "Spy" giving way to the more spacy sounding "Drowtoborn" but it's never quite that simple and in each track he sounds like he's playing three or four songs at once. Bass/vocalist Yukari whoops, screeches, and squawks like Lydia Lunch in a cat fight with Kate Bush, her voice switching between different modes at a moment's notice. One second she's making childish vocal doodles, as on "2 x 5 = 10," and another she's letting off a machine gun rattle of Bruce Lee yelps as on "Old Hong-Kong Restaurant." Limited Express approach songwriting in a postmodern way, deconstructing the arrangements before they can even take shape, but unfortunately this focus on the process rather than the content means that the album ends up feeling a little thin. However, whatever else it may be, Feeds You! is certainly an exhilarating experience, an undiluted energy rush from start to finish, and an enormous amount of fun that the band are having, meaning it can't help but rub off on the listener.