For Melt-Banana, ‘3+5’ equals a culmination of musical growth
The Tokyo noise pop band's ninth studio album came out last month, their first full release in 11 years
Tokyo-based duo Melt-Banana consists of Ichiro Agata and Yasuko Onuki.
Courtesy of Melt-Banana
Words by Andy Crump
Ask any elementary schooler what three plus five is, and they’ll tell you eight. In accordance with basic mathematics, this is correct. But in the idiosyncratic world of Yasuko Onuki and Ichiro Agata, the duo comprising the Tokyo noise pop band Melt-Banana, nine is also correct: Last month, they released 3+5, their ninth studio album—perhaps so named in acknowledgment of the octet of releases preceding it, or maybe they were feeling cheeky, or possibly for reasons none of us who inhabit the space outside of Onuki’s and Agata’s heads can ever appreciate.
Whatever the inspiration behind 3+5’s nomenclature, the record is a long time coming. Melt-Banana’s last release, Fetch, came out in 2013 to a broad positive response; its mixture of bubblegum pop-punk and high-octane, low-end metal functioned as a statement piece about Onuki and Agata’s artistic maturation in the two decades since their 1994 debut, Speak Squeak Creak. It’s reasonable to wonder why they would let another decade go by given Fetch’s hosannas, why they would pass on amassing more acclaim by maintaining that momentum, and, with 3+5 in circulation as of Aug. 23, how their identity has changed over the passage of time—and if it’s changed at all.
“A lot of people ask us, ‘What were you doing for over 10 years?’ But we’ve been active throughout that time,” Agata tells JoySauce. 3+5’s tracks aren’t the product of a “eureka” moment where he and Onuki decided that 10 years were long enough to go without dropping a new record; they were written in the margins of a hectic schedule. “We’ve been working on this album little by little ever since we released [Fetch],” Agata says.
Onuki adds that “it didn’t feel like we were on a break” in that time, pointing out the live performances, singles, and collaborations with other musicians comprising their output from 2013 to now: Tours with Metal Machine Trio (2010), Napalm Death and Melvins (2016), and Igorr and Otto von Schirach (2023), a seven-inch vinyl record split with Napalm Death in 2016, and their second compilation album, Return of 13 Hedgehogs, in 2015. “When the album was finished and we looked back, we realized more than 10 years had passed,” Onuki continues. “We didn’t feel like it took a long time to make it.”
Melt-Banana wrapped up 3+5 during the COVID-19 pandemic, though Onuki notes that by the time the world shut down, it was “almost finished by that point.” Contrary to the chilling effect COVID had on many creative endeavors that were either underway or in preliminary phases at the time, the virus actually played a part in 3+5’s finalization; Onuki and Agata set up a Patreon page during the outbreak, where they published posts mulling over their long, storied past—something they don’t often get to do—and this gave them the fuel necessary to put a bow on the record. “I think [the Patreon page] had a strong influence on the final push to complete [3+5],” Onuki says.
Granted that she and Agata composed the bulk of the album’s tracks over the course of the mid to late 2010s, COVID’s indirect motivational impact on its production is therefore minimal. But the frenetic joy conveyed in Onuki’s signature chirpy vocalism, combined with the buzzing futurist precision of Agata’s guitar chops, nonetheless indicates a sort of cathartic enthusiasm. Melt-Banana didn’t go dormant after Fetch dropped, true, but 3+5’s sustained emotional punch stirs up the perception that Onuki and Agata are just happy to play new music. Concurrently, it’s impossible to ignore the impression that what they wish to convey above all else on the album is a straightforward declaration: We’re back, let’s rock.
Cover art for "3+5."
Courtesy of Melt-Banana
Opener “Code” draws infectious exuberance out of glitched-up hooks; further down the tracklist, “Flipside” and “Whisperer” follow suit. Imagining a crowded auditorium of fans reacting to these songs’ anthemic, head-bopping qualities comes naturally. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder; maybe the songwriting on 3+5 is that urgent and propulsive. (It is.) That distinction is largely in the ear of the beholder. What is squarely on the shoulders of the music itself is sensation and purpose. At the time of this writing, no lyric sheet was available for 3+5, and picking words out of Onuki’s birdsong lyricism is a Herculean challenge. It doesn’t matter. The songs are affecting regardless.
Just as legendary Aussie filmmaking maverick George Miller shot 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road where, “the idea was to make a film where, as (Alfred) Hitchcock says, ‘They don’t have to read the subtitles in Japan,’” 3+5’s implicit message is similar: You don’t have to understand the words to experience their impact. (In a delightful slice of irony, Onuki has sung in English, instead of Japanese, from Melt-Banana’s outset. It’s the chirping that makes the familiar foreign.) “Scar,” for instance, takes a downturn that reads as sorrowful, where rich, humming bass notes and the reverberating pound of the kick drum express something like mourning. Meanwhile, “Puzzle” brings a higher level of manic energy to bear, resulting in one of the album’s most pleasingly off-kilter tracks. Every listener will arrive at their own conclusions as to what each track is about. They’ll also know, whatever the record means to them, that they’ve had their brains zapped.
The people we meet, and the influence they have on us, are better determining factors for who we become as we grow up than age itself.
The focused mastery Onuki and Agata demonstrate throughout 3+5 introduces a sharp dichotomy between how they’ve changed as people since Onuki formed Melt-Banana, originally named Mizu, in 1991, versus how the music has changed. Onuki doesn’t think she’s changed at all, while Agata’s perspective on what we gain from growing older has shifted. “When I was a kid, or even for a while after I became an adult, I thought that getting older would make me smarter than I was when I was younger,” he says. “But in reality, I found out that you don’t necessarily become more intelligent. What changes is more about the environment around you.” The people we meet, and the influence they have on us, are better determining factors for who we become as we grow up than age itself. (Ultimately, Agata decides that he hasn’t changed much since he was a kid.)
To drive that point home, Agata recalls his memories of Onuki from Melt-Banana’s early beginnings. “Yako was very focused on shaping the core ideas and was determined to strip away anything unnecessary,” he explains. “But after meeting various bands and musicians, I think her openness increased.” The band’s sound is the prime beneficiary of these interactions; for Speak Squeak Creak, Onuki would read her lyrics to Agata, and they would then, as he puts it, “turn those into sound.” For Melt-Banana’s third album, Scratch or Stitch, Onuki’s ideas remained the chief motivator for the songs, but Agata began creating what she calls “demos with a lot of detail,” which functioned as a sort of blueprint for her. “I listen to Agata’s demos tens of thousands of times and find the answers within myself,” Onuki says. “Sometimes it’s tough, but it’s also fun, like solving a difficult puzzle.”
The Melt-Banana songwriting process hasn’t changed. What has changed, Agata says, is “Yako’s ideas and what she wanted to do.” The gap separating the aural characteristics of Speak Squeak Creak from 3+5’s is staggering in scope; the former is a comparatively stripped down piece of work, operating on a more humble (but no less lively) plane than the latter. If 3+5 is reflective of Melt-Banana’s journey from the 1990s to the 2020s in any one way, it’s the degree to which working with, and playing for, their musical peers has sparked constant newness in their songwriting. Slowly but surely, with each passing release, Onuki and Agata have upgraded their audio aesthetics, layering new ones over the old ones.
In keeping with Melt-Banana’s constitutional eccentricity, Onuki says that lately, for her and Agata, “it feels like we’re wearing power suits and injecting nanomachines into our bodies.” Think of them as the Iron Man of the Japanoise music scene, equipped with a seemingly endless array of sonic techniques and sensibilities, over which they wield an awesome, peerless command. There is no band like Melt-Banana. Years from now, that statement might apply to the Melt-Banana we know now, too, because the Melt-Banana yet to come might achieve a new stage of transcendently exhilaration. For the moment, 3+5 is the end result of 32 years of inspired experimentation, a certifiable madcap trip, and quite possibly their magnum opus.
Published on September 17, 2024
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.