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.
