Show Preview: Cibo Matto, Salt Cathedral

CIBO MATTO

[LES GIRLS] During the 15 years since Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda vanished into the intercontinental ether, their duo act, Cibo Matto, wasn't quite forgotten. If their initial pair of albums haven't exactly been on anyone's heavy rotation, only a fool would deny the pervasive influence forged by idiom-bending, hippest-hop-dappled artful dodges of intent. In those halcyon days before Facebook, nobody else so blithely substituted meaning with strung-together references to friends of mutual interest, microgenres of presumable import and, well, lunch. New release Hotel Valentine slightly deepens the conceit by organizing Tropicália-digitalist flourishes around a concept album devoted to a ghost's impressions of an afterlife stranded amid upscale lodgings. Whatever their failings of vision, no act has framed chic wispiness better. The dreaminess of Cibo Matto's offerings has always been overstated, not least because the band's relentlessly thoughtful design lay so vividly in the foreground. Like Cibo Matto's Beastie cousins in end-of-the-century tastemaker ubiquity, any cloak of stoned whimsy arrived drenched with sweat—less a genuine reverie than multimedia presentation of (and commentary on) altogether ordinary dream journals dutifully recorded by exceptional folk. For better or worse, their cultural heirs have either taken up concerted residencies in adopted genres or let their dilettante flag flow freely. With all the world presuming itself the Lower East Side, why must anyone count themselves mere guests?

GO: Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 28. $20 advance, $22 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015

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