By Julene Snyder
Genre-bending has become the new national pastime -- especially when it comes to what was once called "alternative" music. Listen to the latest releases and you'll find country rhythms nestled up next to hip-hop beats. Bossanova combines with punk bombast. Heavy metal happily coexists with soaring harmonies. Lo-fi effects are enhanced by sophisticated studio mixes. The best artists leap off aural cliffs with abandon, reinventing themselves not just with every record, but with every song.
Cibo Matto proves themselves to be a band on the brink with their new record, "Stereotype A." A dazzling collection of infectious tracks, the record meanders from the space-age groovefest of "Working for Vacation" to the hip-hop whimsy of "Sci-Fi Wasabi" to the driving metal riffs of "Blue Train." While their debut record, "Viva! La Woman," was centered around food, this sophomore disc uses innovation and fluidity as an ever-morphing theme. There's no pinning down the sound and labeling it this or that, since it changes from one moment to the next.
Evading easy labels suits band co-founders and front-women Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda just fine. Speaking on the phone from New York, Yuka recalls critical reaction to that first record and the band's ensuing fight to be taken seriously. "I think a lot of people thought that we were singing about food, which we weren't," she says emphatically. "It was just one of the elements we were weaving into the format. It got a lot of attention, because it was very eccentric to have food-themed music."
It seems that some people think that stuffing one's debut album with a smorgasbord of titles like "Beef Jerky" and "Know Your Chicken" is the equivalent of putting on a silly hat and telling knock-knock jokes. But being a Rodney Dangerfield punchline is definitely not what Cibo Matto had in mind. Nonetheless, beyond the pair's passion for making music, there's plenty of zeal left over for other interests as well. Such as, well … food.
Cibo Matto (pronounced "cheebo motto") means "food crazy" in Italian, and Yuka is quick to concede that she's a foodie from way back. In fact, it was food that brought her together with comrade-in-arms Miho Hatori in the first place. "We definitely became fast friends because we both are really into food and its culture and what people think about food," she laughs. "We had read a lot of cookbooks, and people talk about food, and we were really into the whole philosophy of food."
Luckily, at least some of the critical response to that first record focused on the band's musical appetites rather than their yen for yummy taste sensations. "Entertainment Weekly" called "Viva! La Woman" "kitschy club music, as kooky and lovable as Hello Kitty." A less back-handed compliment came from "Option," who said, "Cibo Matto has spun its oddball vision and limited technical prowess into creative gold, rocketing from East Village obscurity to high-concept product in record time." As one might expect, the topic of food tended to come up in interview more than a little.
"When we decided to make the second album, Miho and I sat around and talked about what happened to us with the food theme," Yuka recalls. "We kept going into this problem of stereotypes that we would have. We thought that since people asked us so many questions about food for our first album, that if we had this album 'Stereotype' we wouldn't mind people asking us questions about that. I also like the word stereotype because it sounds like 'monotype', 'stereotype.' Like 'Are you a mono-type? Or a stereo-type?'"
She pauses. "It's kind of interesting to me. Also we have two people, and stereo is something with two perspective points, your left ear and right ear." She adds, almost as an afterthought, "And also the fact that we are Japanese women doing music. That's related to stereotype, the word stereotype." Hence, the album title "Stereotype A."
Now well into her 30s, Yuka never thought that she would grow up to be a musician. "I took piano lessons when I was a kid," she recalls. "But I wasn't really a good student, and I didn't get along with my piano teacher." She stopped taking lessons because she hated it. "It was very unfortunate, now that I look back. But at that time, it seemed like the best decision." What she really wanted to be as an adult was a writer. "I used to do interviews for Japanese magazines, but ever since I started music, I haven't really written anything," Yuka says ruefully.
Her entry into the music scene was really facilitated by the people she knows in New York; in many ways, serendipity played a large part in the evolution of Cibo Matto. "One day a friend of a friend called me and said he needed a keyboard player. And I said, 'I haven't really played keyboards in a band or anything,' but he knew I could read and he said, 'I just need a keyboard player who can read and will read the part that I wrote, and who will not give me a lot of creative input.' I thought 'Maybe I can do that.' That was my first experience playing in a band, as a sideman, basically. So my interest got really blown up. I was writing music at home because I was kind of good with machines."
To say she's "kind of good" is kind of an understatement. Yuka Honda produced not just the latest Cibo Matto album, but the critically acclaimed debut record, "Into the Sun" by Sean Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Both are multi-layered discs, with an abundance of elements in the production mix, and Yuka has managed to handle both production and musical duties with aplomb. On her own record, she writes most of the music – with Miho handling lyrics and vocals – as well as playing sampler and sequencer, organ, piano, electric piano, synthesizer, harpsichord, vocoder and vocals. On Sean's record, she co-wrote a few songs and handled a similar array of instruments. Nonetheless, she finds that there are those who don't think women are truly capable of being competent in the studio.
"If I walk into a studio with Sean and say 'I'm producing his album,' everybody assumes that he's producing it with me," she says with resignation. "Or if I walk into the studio and say 'I'm producing my album' -- since Sean is in my band they naturally assume that he is behind the curtain doing everything and that we're just doing what he tells us." She admits to being frustrated by the situation, but refuses to pay attention to ignorant assumptions. Even so, she hesitates to call herself a feminist and says it's important to her to hang onto her femininity no matter what. "The word feminine has this image of maybe not professional enough. I do want us to overcome and throw away that image by being women and doing what we do really seriously."
Being in a high-profile relationship has got to add to the conclusion-leaping. While she's been romantically involved with Sean for a few years now, she doesn't volunteer information about the relationship with the same open enthusiasm as he has. Lennon dedicated his album to her with the words, "without you I would have had nothing to write about." Certainly much has been written about the pair, with details like their living arrangements (sharing a loft in lower Manhattan), his mother's reaction to the relationship (she approves) and a fairly large age difference (she's much older) becoming public fodder.
Sean tends to burble about the love affair, telling "Entertainment Weekly" some fairly intimate details about how the romance heated up while Lennon was on tour with Cibo Matto: "Everybody started teasing us because we hadn't, like, kissed yet. But we were always kind of holding hands and stuff." It may well be that Yuka is equally forthcoming, but the better part of chivalry prevented probing questions about her personal life.
It took over a year to record "Stereotype A," mainly because of a different way of approaching songwriting this time out. "It wasn't like we were in the studio for over a year," says Yuka. "We went in for two weeks, then we had a month out of the studio. Then we would go in for another two weeks, then three weeks out of the studio. Meanwhile I was touring with Sean and working on [producing] Sean's album. It turned out to be an ideal way to work for us, because when you're in the studio, it's very intense. It's nice to come home and take a tape and sit with it for a month. I'll realize that I'll hear a lot of different things if I listen in a different environment."
Besides the multi-layered sounds, odd tempos and unexpected touches like waltz interludes and funk-driven beats, Cibo Matto's lyrics stand out even in the current anything-goes pop landscape. Quirky tunes like "The Lint of Love" find Miho admitting, "I can't say I'm good at cleaning it baby … It's made of the 'dust of confusion.'" She warbles with complete sincerity on the infectious album opener "Working for Vacation": "We know we are not apes/ but we could make sweet seedless grapes." Say what? Hey! There's that food imagery again.
When asked to choose a favorite track from the record, Yuka flatly refuses. "No. They're like my children." But she will admit that the driving rocker "Blue Train" is the oldest child, and that the opening track is a very well-liked child: "We feel like it's very Cibo Matto." Oh yes, the skittery groove of the song "Clouds" is a favored child, "Because we collaborated with people from Buffalo Daughter, a band that we really love, so we're really excited about it. It's hard to say, every single song we really really love."
The pair's songwriting process has evolved from the collaborative method they used to write their debut. "It's a little strange, how we work," explains Yuka. "We don't really have a formula
… one of the major ways that it happens is that we write separately. We may talk about it before, but in a very ambiguous manner. And then we go home and we may not write everything according to what we said. Still, quite often they'll match as soon as we get together and try them on. So we usually have the songs really fast once we get together. For this album we've tried other ways: I've asked Miho to write lyrics first and I put the melody later. And we also have songs that we write with the band in the rehearsal studio."
Such as? "'Blue Train' totally came in the studio. We got together and were going to rehearse another song. Sean and Timo [Ellis] were jamming a little bit and I heard a song there so on the spot I asked them to play it a certain way. We just started to play and found the natural groove." This organic approach to writing has served the band well. The core group is made up of Miho (vocals, shaker, acoustic guitar), Yuka (sampler and sequencer, organ, piano, electric piano, synthesizer, harpsichord, vocoder, vocals), Sean (bass, synth bass, drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion, synthesizer, vocoder, vocals, 12-string guitar, delay pedal) and Timo (drums, bass, vocals, acoustic guitar, 8-string bass, cymbals). On the record, Duma Love provided vocals, percussion, beat box and turntable; he'll join the upcoming tour. Other contributing players included Marc Ribot, Dave Douglas, John Medeski and Joshua Roseman. Whew.
"I know so many great musicians in this town," says Yuka excitedly. "I really know them, I know them personally and that's my best treasure, how many musicians I know and how great they do their music. It's very exciting and inspiring to always find new people who are doing amazing exciting things. I love being in New York."
With a tour in support of "Stereotype A" looming, Yuka hasn't given much thought to what comes next. "Nobody's letting us think about the moment the tour's over," she laughs. But when asked what she wishes interviewers wouldn't ask her, she answers like a shot. "It's hard for me to do interviews when people are asking me 'What's your favorite animal?' or 'what's your favorite food?' That's very difficult."
So, as much as we might want to know, we'll have to be content without knowing what animal Yuka Honda would be if she had a choice. Just as we'll draw the curtain without knowing if she wishes people wouldn't bring up the John and Yoko/Sean and Yuka comparison. Don't worry: Less circumspect questioners will doubtless let us know the dirt in breathless detail.