Here's probably my favorite current J-pop group out there right now,the rocking and quirky SHAKALABBITS!
A Friend asked me to describe them in a sentence, and I said "Judy and Mary for a new generation of fans!"
YES I said JAM, so they're an acquired taste and not for the faint of heart!
Whenever I would check out the latest postings on the mighty Japanese ORICON charts, there always seemed to be groups that charted regularly in the top echelon that never seemed to appear in television shows like Music Station and such. You would see these names like ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, GARNET CROW and BUMP-OF-CHICKEN, and think, “Who ARE these groups?” I suppose if I lived in Japan, or at least had access to japan radio shows, I’d know them, but being completely reliant on shows like UTABAN and HEY HEY HEY to “educate” me about new groups, there were quite a few that remained unknown to me!
Shakalabbits was one such group. I’d see this group with its weird name continually making the top twenty in the Oricon charts, and one day, a kind and generous soul on Jpopsuki uploaded the latest single of theirs called “DAZZLING SOUP”, and I downloaded it so I could finally get to HEAR this group!
Wel, I didn’t know what I expected, but this song was just fantastic! As I mentioned above, they struck me as a latter-day JUDY AND MARY, but this group also seemed to have 1980’s nu-romantic overtones in the music as well (at least in THIS single), and I immediately knew I wanted to hear more!
