Fujiya & Miyagi don’t make big changes. The starkest shift they ever made was probably their lurch from experimental lo-fi electronica on their 2002 debut album Electro Karaoke in the Negative Style into robust and infectious krautrock on their sophomore album and career highlight Transparent Things. Since then they’ve doubled down on their tongue-in-cheek flavour, leaned into the disco and dance side of things, and on their underrated and often ignored 2017 release Different Blades from the Same Pair of Scissors, even dabbled in a continuous release à la LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33.
Their new album Slight Variations does what it says on the tin. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and carries on the style of the Brighton band’s most recent releases, 2019’s Flashback and their 2017 self-titled collection of EPs. “We like the idea that if someone were new to us and they played this record it would convey everything that we are about,” the band remarks about Slight Variations, and it’s not a bad estimation of what you get. The album offers dry monotone quips aplenty from frontman David Best, slinky grooves, gentle brushing up against techno and disco styles, and generally nothing that feels out of place.
Apart from the very first few seconds, that is. The first noise you hear on Slight Variations isn’t that of Fujiya & Miyagi, but instead the vocals of Dublin band Everything Shook, insisting that the listener “leave space.” It’s telling as to how subtle the band’s changes have been over the years that another voice on a Fujiya & Miyagi record is so stark (and probably one of the most distinct shifts and biggest changes they’ve made over their 20-plus years together). It’s just a moment though, and before any real excitement can kick in, a catlike bass and disco pulse soon appear. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Best admits with a facetious grin.
Best has been the glue that has kept the band together over the years, and your fondness of the band’s discography likely rests on how much you care for his schtick. On Slight Variations he’s in adept form. On “Sweat” he implores you to “Dance to the very last drop of sweat” like the expressionless floating head of a personal trainer on a TV screen at a jazzercise class. Similarly he’s like a disembodied robotic voice when he calculates “Analysis / Paralysis” on “Digital Hangover” with all the enthusiasm of a medical diagnosis being determined. Meanwhile, on “New Body Language” he dishes out his best (and perhaps most flirtatious) punchline: “You don’t need a degree in philosophy to read / Your body language.” It’ll induce a smirk the first few times, but soon falls flat.
The moments that do offer repeated visits are those where he unfurls more of his vulnerability, reminding us that there’s a human being behind that dry, unwavering voice. Though it might be full of nonsensical phrases that sound like mistranslations of horoscopes from a phrasebook (“Before you roar like a lion you’ve got to crawl like a tiger”), the iteration of “I got fear written through me like a stick of rock” on the rubbery “Digital Hangover” is one of the album’s most poignant lines. On “FAQ” the double meaning is heavy over the faucet-dripping percussion and solemn synth tones as he utters, “I’m not scared of change / I’m scared of staying the same.” Maybe it’s a joke in line with the album’s title (“We’re just slight variations on the same theme”), but equally it could be Best reckoning with getting older.
Indeed, if there’s a recurring theme across Slight Variations it seems to be this. Mild-mannered disco and techno-infused album closer “Feeling The Effects (Of Saturday Night)” speaks to it most directly; a wearied anthem to exerting one’s self too much. You might even call this their fatalist album, one that looks to the future with a worried view and unpacks certain items of the human condition with a troubled tone. “Olympian Heights”, for example, looks at depression and tries to give reassuring words of comfort about how in the grand scheme of the world, things are okay. Best even refers to exercise and flexing muscles across the album, like the thought of cardio is some great looming presence.
At its best though, Slight Variations is still an enjoyable enough listen, despite its flaws. Its pacing is a little off at times (chipper and luminescent instrumental “Non-Essential Worker” is neat but misplaced as the second track, dissipating the opening song’s energy; the final track ends the album on a lacklustre and unimpressionable note), and none of the tracks imprint themselves in your head like “Ankle Injuries” or “Fear Of Missing Out”. Apart from the occasional spritz of guitar here or a nimble bassline there, it’s perhaps only instrumental “Oops”, with its burbling 90s video game synths, that offers a moment where the music is distinctly noteworthy.
But the band follow through with their aim: Slight Variations is what Fujiya & Miyagi are about at this moment in time; plain faced and wise cracking, wryly worried about the future, and finding ever so slightly new surroundings to put this all into. They’re churning away in a place that sounds comfortable to them, and not outdoing themselves or any expectations of them at this point in their career. In other words, no big changes – but you would never expect that of them.
