rebuilding our punk house
Another Japanese band I like to crank up on my stereo when I’ve had a rough day is House Plan!, a pop punk band from Chiba Prefecture, which is to Tokyo what New Jersey is to Manhattan.
House Plan! just released a nice new album called ‘rebuilding our punk house’. Buying their new album was a big deal for me. I used to love House Plan! in the late 90's, but at some point they disappeared, and I assumed they were history. Until last year, when I discovered a flier for one of their shows and found out that they were back in action.
It turned out that two out of the three original House Plan! members had left for reasons I'm not aware of, and were replaced by three punk scene veterans, including a bass player named Umu who was formerly in the Beat Crusaders and now also plays for the Bank$ and PolyABC.
This latest album by House Plan! is their first since 2000, which is nothing compared with Mission of Burma’s comeback after more than 20 years, but still, four years are an eternity in Japan’s indies punk scene.
The old House Plan! did fast, fun, non-brainy pop punk songs with titles like ‘Ninja Force’ and ‘Psycho’. The new version of the band may be marginally more mature musically, but they still don’t take themselves too seriously, none of the eight songs on the new album is longer than 2 minutes and 46 seconds, all those songs are pure rockers, and the album is great for recharging energy.
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