Kazutoki Umezu Fuyu no Buri-Buri

December 22, 2008 Shinjuku Pit Inn

Kazutoki Umezu – saxes
Kiyohiko Semba - drums
Yoshiaki Sato – accordion, piano
Isao Tsukamoto - guitar
Kaori Takahashi – violin
Yoko Tada - sax
Takao Watanabe - trumpet
Vagabond Suzuki - bass
Sizzle Ohtaka – vocals
Emi Shirasaki - vocals
Kohshi Yamada - vocals

A full house for Umezu’s latest musical incarnation is perhaps no surprise, but the range of cabaret, pop and enka songs given his neo-jazz treatment comes out surprising just the same. Starting out with “Cabaret,” the evening was filled with as much showmanship as musicianship; a balance that the standing room only crowd had no trouble with, so why should anyone else? The nice thing about Umezu’s musical consciousness is that it never stays in one place too long, but dances through music that is unexpected, slightly weird and ripe for reconsideration.

The band got to work with a locked-in, two-step rhythm throbbing beneath lyrical, melancholy melodies torn apart simultaneously by all the musicians on stage. That open melodic sense fit well with the singers, though they must have been straining to find the harmony to support their vocals. Singers kept coming on fast and furious throughout the evening.  Kohshi Yamada delivered a heavy dose of glam-rock meets enka meets club-ish jazz meets well, himself! He’s a cabaret singer in the old style, with enough melodrama in his veins to fill the song slot of any 1930s movie.

Following Yamada, Emi Shirasaki sang two songs that felt uniquely influenced by old, unusual styles.  In her voice, you hear strange snippets of enka, entertaining bits of pre-war pop, and odds and ends of jazz vocals. You expect to hear the scratchy sound of a needle lifting up at the end of her singing. Sizzle Ohtaka’s voice soars with a passionate and somewhat otherworldly beauty. Her voice drapes itself over the backing music and embraces all the sounds with strength and domination. Each of these singers returned later for more vocals in the second set.

Umezu and the band kept everything rocketing along, like some parody of the Japanese New Year singing on TV every December 31st. The dancers from the Dance Venus dance troupe made it all the more bizarre, but bizarre was hardly lacking. Umezu mixes up strange concoctions of instrumentals. The horn section blasts away while accordion wells up beside the old-world violin. The rhythms were pop, but old-school pop before marketing categories that rigidified the music. This music is loose, like a melting pop-art statue of some kind.

The band flowed all over the place, unafraid of challenging any expectations. The first set closed with a rousing version of the throbbing “Peter Gunn” that somehow, kind of before you realized it, edged into a rousing version of “Caravan.” By “version”, I mean it centered on a heavy metal bass solo by Vagabond Suzuki.” And, well, why not? The second set started up with the “Perry Mason Theme,” worked over by unusual rhythm switches and odd textures.

When the band kicked into a strangely limping-waltzing “Tennessee Waltz,” no one in the rush-hour-train crowded room could have had any sense of surprise left. A delicate version of “Sweet Georgia Brown” segued into a 50s surf beat, before the three vocalists came back out for a bit of camp and kitsch, but always delivered with a knowing, loving hand. It was the kind of show where you need a thesaurus to articulate your reactions, but all the words you’d pick come out pleased and intrigued.