[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?
WWeek 2015