Another day, another genre of music invented. The genre
du jour is "quirk pop." That's the phrase that
allmusic.com uses to describe
Sushirobo. What's it mean? Well, judging from Sushirobo's
The Light-Fingered Feeling of Sushirobo, it's playful in that not-really-jokey-but-certainly-not-serious manner that was championed in the '90s by Cake and The Presidents of the United States of America. It's the kind of music that can start off aping the bass riff from Joy Division's "Dead Souls" before spiraling off into madness, with lyrics like "She is a trope/my perfect isotope/and I'm just the smallest bar of soap" (from the weirdly affectionate "New Laboratory Assistant" ).
That's the quirk. The pop is in the music, which rattles, shrieks and sometimes even jams, but still has hooks enough to snare you in. Every band that comes around doesn't need a new label, but if more bands like Sushirobo come around, quirk pop might be here to stay.
