And still they keep on knocking out albums: you have to hand it to Shonen Knife for maintaining their work rate. Free Time is studio album number 15 in their career that now spans 30 years. It's not entirely surprising that it shares considerable common ground with its predecessor, 2010's 'Super Group', but then, the same could be said of most of their albums. That's hardly a criticism, though: after all, if you want energetic guitar-based power pop, you'd be hard pushed to find a band more adept at it than Shonen Knife.
It's pretty remarkable that after all these years they still have so much energy and evident enthusiasm: 'Free Time' is precisely the opposite of tired and jaded, it's positively effervescent and packed with short, punchy nuggets of the sort that the band are renowned for. That doesn't mean it's all plastic and disposable: 'Economic Crisis' is a driven punk tune, full of old-school antagonism and anti-authoritarian anger with Naoko demanding 'Where's the missing money?' like she wants answers yesterday.
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'Free Time' sees the trio push the guitars up a few notches, but above all, 'Free Time' is business as usual for Shonen Knife, with the emphasis very much on buzzed-up, fuzzed-up pop and neon-hued manga-style J-punk fun.
Shonen Knife Online
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