JAPAN - TIN DRUM @ 40

 

November 13th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Japan’s fifth and final studio album, Tin Drum, which was issued on this date in 1981. It would become the band’s most commercially and critically successful album, decisively pulling them out of the shadows of any previous comparisons to bands like Roxy Music and into a sound that was entirely their own.

Only a few years earlier, the band had emerged as a bunch of out-of-step glam-rock, lipstick and dyed-hair pretty boys. This was right in the middle of the punk explosion! How they ended up in the lofty artistic position they found themselves in with this last album is something of a marvel of improbability. Where their first two albums, when they garnered any attention at all, tended to attract mostly scorn and ridicule, Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids were committed to the Herculean task of rehabilitating their credibility and the pieces came into their sharpest arrangement on Tin Drum.

Given the Eastern inclination of their name, which they bore as a burden in some ways, the idea of diving headlong into Asian influences may have been inevitable, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for what they’d do with them. As musicians, they’d been grossly underestimated and Tin Drum put to bed any lingering doubts about their capabilities. The album is complex, intricate and dazzling in its array of textures and tones. As far as mastering the tools of the modern day, they found ways to put synthesizers and sequencers to work for them in tandem with more tradition percussion instruments in ways that became completely idiosyncratic to them. Nothing else on the airwaves came close to this sound and it was entirely their own creation.

By the time recording began on the album, guitarist Rob Dean had departed thanks to the reduced reliance on guitar as a central component of their sound. With the emphasis on keyboards, David Sylvian was more than able to handling what little guitar duties were called for. This allowed the rhythm section of Steve Jansen on drums and Mick Karn on fretless bass to push forward even more and create a framework of rich complexity, though never so indulgent as to work against the integrity of the music. Nothing sounds cluttered or overwrought on the album. There’s a lot going on at any given point, save for the minimal hit single, Ghosts, but it’s all meticulously balanced. Richard Barbieri shines on the keyboards as he augments Karn and Jansen with an expansive sound palette that seem to come from an entirely exclusive reservoir. And David Sylvian, of course, brings it all together with his inventive, evocative lyrics and sultry croon.

It seemed like they were just hitting their stride with this album, so it’s all the more confounding that it would be their swan song. They’d put out a live album in 1983 recorded on the tour that supported Tin Drum, but that was it. A brief reunion would happen ten years after Tin Drum for the Rain Tree Crow project, though that didn’t garner significant attention, despite being a very satisfying album. Perhaps it was best for their legacy for them to have gone out on such a stunning high note. It ultimately worked to reinforce their legend and highlight the trajectory they traveled, from dismissed objects of scorn to the peak of critical respectability, all in less than a half decade. I came on board the Japan wagon with Quiet Life in 1979, so that album, Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980) and Tin Drum form a fabulous trifecta of musical distinction. They all continue to find themselves creeping into rotation at regular intervals. In fact, I find myself listening to them in recent years even more than I did when these albums originally came out. Time has only highlighted their assets and deepened my appreciation for them.