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Dec 19, 2011 Boris By J. Pace

Boris fans are used to left turns, but New Album opener “Flare,” with its hyped-up J-pop plus Mars Volta mall-prog collision, could have them double-checking to make sure this is in fact a Boris album. That is, if they don’t know the story: that the group was inspired by Japanese Vocaloid pop, enlisted pop producer Shinobu Narita, and re-worked several tunes from this year’s previous pair of albums, Attention Please and Heavy Rocks—along with a few new tunes—to achieve “extreme pop.”

So here you have the “heavy rocks” of Boris through an electronic Japanese pop filter, at times with the manic enthusiasm of the Giga Pudding commercial. “Lest you forget, we are Japanese,” it seems to scream. But through all the WTF, a few gems arise, such as “Luna,” which drapes orchestrated synth-pop over a bed of black-metal guitars and sound effects; “Spoon,” which is Boris’ weird and explosive take on shoegaze; or “Jackson Head” (from Heavy Rocks), reworked here into an industrial dance number. There are some duds, but overall it’s a fun divergence for this group, now enjoying a year full of divergences. (www.borisheavyrocks.com)

Author rating: 6/10