Shonen Knife clearly love
the Ramones, and it shows: they obviously admire their knack for simple but hooky and hard-rocking tunes, and much like the Brothers from Forest Hills,
Shonen Knife are a band with a formula, and more than two decades after releasing their first album, they're still committed to it. Even though
Naoko Yamano's simple but enthusiastic technique as a guitarist has improved quite a bit over the years, her songwriting style remains very much the same, devoted to straightforward and upbeat tunes with playful, child-like lyrics, and her current bandmates (bassist
Ritsuko Taneda and drummer
Etsuko Nakanishi) may be more expert than
Shonen Knife Mk. One, but their four-square stomp reveals them to be stubborn, dedicated traditionalists. 2011's
Free Time is an improvement over its immediate predecessor, 2009's
Super Group, though the ideas behind it are pretty much the same: simple, punk-leaning melodies played with reasonable muscle and speed as
Yamano sings about jellyfish, cake, love, fruit, and other topics more befitting a teenage girl than a middle-aged woman. The difference between this and
Super Group is that
Free Time rocks harder, with
Yamano and her rhythm section drawing more sweat and throwing themselves into the material with noticeably greater enthusiasm, while the production gives the guitar a more robust tone and punches up the bass and drums, and
"Love Song" is a better pop song than
Yamano has written in quite a while. If you're going to follow
the Ramones/
Shonen Knife analogy,
Free Time is not unlike
Mondo Bizarro or
Animal Boy; not exactly a late-career triumph, but evidence that the band can go through the paces with skill and commitment, and if this isn't likely to make anyone a convert, longtime fans won't walk away disappointed. ~ Mark Deming
