When Weirdness Works

Late 2018, a German-Japanese trio wound up performing across Tokyo—high-rises, theaters, TV studios the size of a shoebox. Yuka Otsuki on vocals from the Japanese side, Matthias Erhard and Dominik Scherer from Germany, and someone decided to bring inflatable pandas, enormous plush toys, latex figures, whatever would fit through a venue door. I don’t understand the appeal of literal inflation as aesthetic, but the absurdity matched the music perfectly.

Artpop is one of those categories that means everything and nothing. In their hands it becomes something genuinely strange—experimental enough that you can feel the thinking, pop enough that it doesn’t ask you to work. Not a world music project with all its careful credentialing. Just a band that got weird and stayed comfortable with it.

The interesting part isn’t what they sound like. It’s that they never tried to soften it. Pandas in costumes treated with complete seriousness. Pop music that doesn’t feel obligated to justify itself to anyone. They didn’t position themselves as a cultural bridge, didn’t apologize, didn’t explain anything. Just the actual sound of what happens when you spend real time in two cities and stop trying to make it make sense for other people.

I don’t know what they’re doing now. Probably still weird. Probably still refusing to tone it down. There’s something really cool about bands that way—the ones that get comfortable with being uncomfortably strange and just commit to it.