Warming up the stage with a lean blast of angular guitar rock, Japanese trio Yura Yura Teikoku was a fitting opener, just as interested in its music's fringes as the headliners so obviously were. - Boston Globe2
But for me -- and several bewildered folks I spoke with during and after the show -- the night belonged to Yura Yura Teikoku, a Tokyo-based psych-rock trio that opened the show. Sweet holy hell. They might be my new favorite band. I even bought a CD at the show, which I rarely do -- mostly because I typically already have CDs sent to me from bands playing shows at HG. And also 'cuz I'm cheap. - Solid State3
In its native Tokyo, the psychedelically inclined Yura Yura Teikoku is a known quantity, its roots winding back to 1989. In New York, where the trio didn’t bother to perform until recent years, it still registers as an exotic blip. Yet America may be closing this blind spot: Yura’s latest album, Hollow Me, was just released by the chic Manhattan label DFA; now, on the heels of New England shows with Yo La Tengo, the band headlines Music Hall of Williamsburg. Though renowned for its big guitars and wild aura, the trio sounds compressed and brainy in its new work. Hollow Me and its accompanying EP, Beautiful, evoke Brian Eno’s pop albums and the hermetic motion inherent to krautrock, with unlikely shoots of soft rock deliberately sprouting through the cracks. The band becomes at once sleek and strange—psychedelic in its very tidiness. - Time Out New York4
Here’s a video clip from the group’s hefty performance last year at the same venue. Rock on!
1Music Hall of Williamsburg
2James Reed, "Popular or not, Yo La Tengo still thrills", Boston Globe, Sept. 18, 2009
3Dan Bolles, "Turning Japanese", Seven Days, Sept. 16, 2009
4Jay Ruttenberg, "Yura Yura Teikoku", Time Out New York, Sept. 17-23, 2009
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