It's been three years since New York City's favorite Japanese hipsters unloaded their sonic refrigerator of loopy odes to chicken and beef jerky on Viva! La Woman. On the new album they try to prove to the world that their muse goes a lot deeper than the local grocery store. It a little more personal than its predecessor, with songs about a rendezvous with Obi Wan Kenobi, old friends and the art of cloud watching with their funky poetic beauty. Produced entirely by Cibo, the album blends throbbing hip-hop beats, ear-slapping jazz fusion, metallic guitar blasts, Farfisa-driven bossa nova and gorgeous Brazilian pop melodies, but you can't throw just anything into the mix.
Common sense dictates that bananas, oranges, pickles and coffee would taste like crap together, so when Cibo Matto go a little overboard, they stumble over their blender blunders. But looking for sense in a Cibo Matto song is like trying to find a universe-centering piece of philosophy in a Spice Girls ditty - by doing so, you're missing out on all the fun. And on Stereo Type A, fun is the name of the game, which is why we can forgive them for some of their ill-advised bananas-and-pickles detours.
