Fujiya & Miyagi are at the point in their 20-plus-year career where they know exactly what they are doing with each release. Their last album, 2022’s Slight Variations, said the quiet part out loud: this is the same music again with only small changes. Some new effects or sounds, an easy-to-appreciate new detail that hardly changes the world or the image, but enough to show that the Brighton band can evolve – albeit with careful consideration and pace.
And ultimately that’s fine. No one going into a Fujiya & Miyagi album this late into their discography is going to do so without knowing what’s on the agenda. Careful krautrock drumming as accurate as a machine, fritzy guitar riffs, slick basslines driving the track along, and David Best’s dry-as-sandpaper deadpan vocal delivery.
On their new album, New Shiny Object, the band once again says the quiet part out loud: “You can never be new again,” Best confesses on the title track. And that’s the crux: we all pine for Fujiya & Miyagi at their height, back in 2006 when they released their best album, Transparent Things. Back then the band’s whole schtick was fresh and new and at its funniest. It could be argued that the band have been chasing that high ever since, but perhaps that’s projection from the listener’s side. Regardless, New Shiny Object is arguably the closest they have gotten to that high; it’s neat, mildly acerbic, amusing, sleek, and one of their best efforts since their heyday.
Things do feel better off the bat: the sliding bass and a guitar chord like a flick of the wrist on opening track “Lowest Common Denominator” announces the band with their ubiquitous flair and doesn’t let the momentum evaporate. “Point 33 Recurring” leans into a similar mathematical circuitry, once again showing their ability to make minute, almost obsessive detail sound oddly fun and rhythmical. It’s nothing inherently new, but they are better examples of the band’s formula working well, fusing krautrock, art-pop, disco, and post-punk.
When they step outwards they make their most lasting impressions. On “Elasticated Waste” Best delivers something between beat poetry and a spoken word rap about consumerist excess and gluttony. “These chocolate bar wrappers won’t unwrap themselves / These digestives won’t digest themselves by sitting on the shelves, dawg,” he dispatches with a pointedness that somehow isn’t as awkward as it reads on paper. The found sounds of dripping hotel showers and what sounds like smashing glass also make for a background texture that adds welcome intrigue and variation.
Elsewhere, on “158”, there’s a surprising tenderness as Best pays tribute to those dearly departed and to youthful days gone by. Named after the bus route associated with his friend, he offers a sympathetic shoulder and olive branch with “This is for anyone who’s ever lost someone” as pulsing, ductile synths akin to an old VHS tape play out behind. It’s a genuinely touching and affecting track, something that the band had only ever teased the outlines of reaching.
The album’s dips are far from bad but show unused potential. The six-minute workout “No Green Light” is a vibrant display from the band but is let down by stuttering lyrics from Best about not being able to move forward. Fittingly, he relays “I can’t express this emptiness that I’m feeling”, but it feels a little too on the nose; even if he’s struggling for words, there feels like a better and more thoughtful alternative to repeating the song’s title to oblivion. “Yakult Classics” is again a solid session showing the band locking in, but it’s telling that its most distinctive feature is being named after the fermented probiotic skimmed milk drink. The album ends on another instrumental, “Manufacturing Delays”, which is another absolutely fine cut but does leave one wishing for a stronger final statement, if not just a longer and more explorative journey.
It is hard to pick fault on such tracks when the band are overall at their best in a while. There’s enough new ventures to make it feel like an important step forward instead of a shuffle in the correct general direction. And Best is quotable as ever, especially when he’s pointing fingers: “It’s basic / It’s pure mathematics,” he chides on “Lowest Common Denominator”; “I wonder if there’s a synonym for doing the bare minimum?” he delivers with a knowing smirk on the alarmed “Simple Pleasures”.
New Shiny Object may not be a peak in Fujiya & Miyagi’s full catalogue, but it is up there as well as being a well-needed reminder that the band are still worth your time and can deliver servings of their own kind of music that is worth coming back to.
