It wouldn’t be very terribly sporting of me to comment much on the lyric content, given that Kitame-san isn’t writing in his native language. There’s no outright “Engrish” (and what an ugly term that is), but there are a few lines that don’t always follow directly from their predecessors. I can think of a few native English speakers about whom I could say the same, though. Jim Morrison would be one of them. Maybe that’s the connection?

There’s the drug thing, too. I’m not accusing anybody of anything, but there does seem to be some sort of chemical interest/influence at work here. Take the opening track, “Sympathy for the Junkies”. OK, the title is something of a giveaway, but the song itself is six minutes and eighteen seconds of guitar noodling over Yashitaka Asano’s bass, which sounds suspiciously like the bassline from Pearl Jam’s “Alive”, and Taro Ishikawa’s steady drumming. Ultimately it goes nowhere, just like your average junkie, although I can see where the piece might appeal to the, ah, chemically altered. The album wraps up with an infinitely more focused instrumental, “The Night Porter”. “Bad Bee Says” refers to running out of “medication”. And the protagonist of “Cracked” is told by his presumed love interest, “you’ve got a monkey on your back”.

But let’s leave the Lizard King aside for a moment and deal with the disc at hand, shall we? It’s sort of a mixed bag, really. In addition to the drugged-out instrumentals (and I’d include the aforementioned “Cracked” with them, even though it has a vocal, since the spirit is the same), you’ve got some full-on garage rockers (“Love Can Bring You Down” – which also features a little noise breakdown, the monster Stooge-y riff-fest of “Light of Love”, “Fever”, the exquisitely titled “Bad Bee Says”) and some power-pop type ballads (the especially Fountains of Wayne-esque “In Shade of Blue” and “Juliette”, “Healer”, “As Tears Go By” – not a Stones cover, by the way – and “Sure Love”). The garage material comes off best to my ears, but then I tend to like that sort of thing anyway. “Sympathy for the Junkies” aside, none of it is bad. I just found myself wishing for a little more stylistic focus. That might be due to the album’s being collected from a couple of Japanese EPs. Be that as it may, it’s almost like three different bands on one CD, which is fine on a mix disc but kinda frustrating when it’s just one group. You start getting one kind of groove on and then they go and change flavors on you.

When it works, though, Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide is pretty good. “Light of Love” and “Bad Bee Says” (is he actually saying “Kurt Cobain is innocent" over a fairly Nirvana-esque riff?) stand out on the garage side of things. If you dig the Beatle/power pop vibe, I recommend “In Shade of Blue” and “”As Tears Go By”, which even name checks “Hide Your Love Away”.

Before I wrap up, I feel obliged to point out the references throughout to what I can only assume is Kitame’s home entertainment system. We can start with the Velvet Underground nod (heh) of the group’s name, and the shout-out to CAN in the album’s title. You’ve also got Stones references (“Sympathy for the Junkies”, “As Tears Go By”), Nirvana (“Bad Bee Says”), and the film The Night Porter, which I saw about a thousand years ago and don’t really remember anything about other than Charlotte Rampling nude save for an SS officer's cap. I suspect that I’m not really doing the film justice with that memory, but that’s my fault.

I seem to have strayed a bit here. We were talking about All Tomorrow’s Party, weren’t we? Yeah, so it’s not a bad disc, but I can’t really recommend it without reservations. If you pick it up, be prepared for a somewhat schizophrenic experience. That said, I’ll be interested to see what the band comes up with for their next album. If it starts out with “Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding / Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind”, though, all bets are off.

(All Tomorrow's Party's Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide is available through Alive Records.)